funhilt.blogg.se

1. Edwin epps borderline personality disorder 12 years a slave trial#
2. Edwin epps borderline personality disorder 12 years a slave free#

But all she was able to do is piece together theories rather than a definite account. Vanity Fair’s Katie Calautti tried to find her, tracing her journey from owner to owner and trying to determine the reliability of Northup’s account of factors like her age. If the lessons we can draw from Solmon Northup’s life have a chilling resonance, the ones we must learn from Patsey’s story have to be drawn from her absence from the historical record. We may have dismantled the plantations where Northup was held in bondage, but we still have our courts, and the kinds of assumptions and loopholes that meant no one was prosecuted for stealing 12 years of Northup’s life.

Having gotten off on charges, a white man turns around and uses his circumstances to charge someone else with committing a crime against him. In a courtroom, a white man’s voice is deemed credible, while a man of color’s is not.

Edwin epps borderline personality disorder 12 years a slave trial#

“The Court,” the Times reported, “decided that the testimony of the slave trader established the fact that Burch came honestly by him, and consequently discharged the defendant.” Burch went on to try to have two black men who he said had sold him Northup tried for conspiracy to defraud him, though the charges were eventually dropped.Īs far away as Solomon Northup’s account of being sold into slavery may seem from contemporary American life - though McQueen reminded the Oscars audience that tens of millions of people are held in slavery elsewhere in the world today - this account of the trial is striking for its modern-day resonance. Unlike the witness to Northup’s kidnapping, Burch’s testimony on his own behalf was ruled admissible over the objections of the prosecution.

Edwin epps borderline personality disorder 12 years a slave free#

The evidence of this colored man was absolutely necessary to prove some facts on the part of the prosecution, as he alone was cognizant of them.” Burch’s defense essentially consisted of his belief in the story of the men who sold Northup to him, who’d said that Northup was a slave from Georgia, and the fact that he’d lost the bill of sale for Solomon’s purchase, making it impossible to prove that he’d actually bought a free man. After Northup was freed, James Burch, the Washington, DC slave-dealer who whipped Solomon and “swore he would kill him if ever stated to anyone that he was a free man” was arrested under a warrant issued by a Justice Goddard and held on a $3,000 bail.īut when Burch went to trial, “the prosecution offered the colored man who had been kidnapped, as a witness on the part of the prosecution, but it was objected to, and the Court decided that it was inadmissable. His experience put him outside the statute of limitations for prosecuting anyone in Louisiana. Whatever that personal resolution, as a recently-unearthed contemporary feature in the New York Times explains, Solomon Northup was unable to get what might have been clear legal justice for all he’d suffered during the time he was held as property. They will have to begin the task of relearning each other, proceeding from the assumption that they love each other deeply. He is profoundly grateful to be back among them, but formal, too, and apologetic. His daughter is grown and has a child of her own, named for the little boy’s absent grandfather. The last time we see Solomon in the film, he’s been returned to his family, now radically transformed during the years he spent in slavery. And I’m even happier that, pegged to the win, there’s a conversation taking place about what happened to Solomon Northup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), the real-life free musician who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, and after his liberation wrote the abolitionist memoir on which the film is based, and to Patsey (portrayed by Lupita Nyong’o, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work), a slave Solomon came to know during his captivity. I’m still extremely pleased that Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave won Best Picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday.