Category Archives: A Soul on Trial

Was Rosa Sutton the First Mother to Challenge the Military over the Death of Her Son?

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Many military court documents still lay buried in the National Archives waiting to be discovered. So unless you know of a case, the answer may be unknown. Cutler’s History News Network essay discusses this case and its relevance today.  http://hnn.us/articles/41493.html  Click here  or cut and paste to your browser.

Please use the contact tab to let us know if you have heard of any other mother who came before a military court before World War I to question the armed services about the death of her child.

And check out the TimesTraveler Blog for September 14,  2009 in which William S. Niederkorn highlighted the Sutton Case. http://timestraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/mrs-rosa-b-sutton/

A Great Arlington Cemetery Website

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If you would like to learn more about the later careers of some of the  officers featured in this story  check out  webmaster Michael R. Patterson’s  terrific site  about Arlington National Cemetery.  www.ArlingtonCemetery.net

Information about the Sutton story, several photos of Jimmie’s grave and the wonderful Oregon fir tree over it can be found if you click this link or scroll down to “click here to search the site” on the home page and type in j n sutton. Sutton is article no.1. Scroll way down for pictures. Harold Utley has some info at no. 3. Thanks to “Holly” for adding the roses to the grave on the 100th anniversary of Sutton’s death.

Michael has been working on this site for more than 15 years  and has included pictures of some of the men and  pictures of their grave markers.  But the site’s real value comes from the more recent moving stories about those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and tales of other military heroes.

Clark County Genealogical Society

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Members of the Clark County Genealogical Society are superb researchers. They have discovered information about the Brant family and even about Lieutenant Sutton’s close friend who disappeared, Edward Roelker, that the author did not have when writing the book. Dozens of people in Vancouver have the surname of Brant and probably some are descended from Rosa’s large family.   Go to http://www.ccgs-wa.org ” for the latest news from Clark County.

From the Gates of Heaven

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Here is an amazing case in which spiritism charges murder though the verdict of the courts is suicide. . . . I am enabled here to give to the world for the first time the details of the part which spiritism has played in the affair from the beginning to the present time; a part so utterly astonishing that it is without a parallel in history.

—Edward Marshall, New York Times

 

On November 12, 1911, a large feature story appeared in the New York Times—one of more than 57 articles and six editorials to appear in the paper about this case. Readers were fascinated by the paranormal aspects of the story — then as now they asked themselves two questions: Can living people communicate with the dead? Or is there life after death? After the Civil War, the number of people who wanted to contact their departed loved ones increased dramatically. And at the beginning of the 20th century there was a widespread interest in ghosts and the supernatural just as there is today.

The Department of the Navy and its representatives were not only skeptical about Mrs. Sutton’s apparitions—they used what they termed her hallucinations to attack her credibility; but many of their fellow Americans found her psychical experiences intriguing if not sensational.

The visions that she saw occurred at a time when a serious group of scholars—psychical researchers—believed that it was possible to study people who had apparitions using scientific methods. In order to save her own reputation, Rosa Sutton asked for help from America’s foremost psychical researcher, James Hyslop. Hyslop and his Oregon associate, George Thacher, ultimately found much could be learned from what Rosa called her visions— her postmortem visits from Jimmie.

In an age of mass violence, searching for something outside of life on earth, not surprisingly, has continued to preoccupy millions of people from all parts of the globe.

In the years since I began working on this story of a mother’s effort to prove her son was not a suicide, the word has taken on a new significance. Frequent headlines about suicide bombings would have been unimaginable 10 years ago. Even more ironic is the fact that many of those who chose this type of suicide believe there will be a reward  for their actions rather than a barrier at the gates of heaven.

Today the Navy has a suicide prevention hotline—and the Catholic Church, mirroring changes in society,  acknowledges that there may be factors that lessen or remove the subjective responsibility of victims of suicide.  Only God may judge among the many reasons for suicide whether or not it is a mortal sin. Priests may be more willing to consider mitigating circumstances than they were when Jimmie Sutton died.  But suicide still is “a gravely  immoral act” in the eyes of the Church.

Military and Civilian Justice

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With the Navy Department’s decision, Rosa Sutton would enter a forum—in fact, a separate subculture—that was as unfamiliar to her as it was to most civilians. Then, as now, Americans lived in “a democratic society committed to civilian control of the military . . . .From its educational institutions to its justice system, the U.S. military still tends to close ranks against outsiders in the face of criticism; this response may cause more public outcry than the original offense warranted.

 

— [pgs. 75, 301]

America’s Constitution ensures that Congress and the executive branch of government have power over the armed forces. But military society remains separate from civilian society. Historically, there has been a reluctance to interfere in the operations of military justice out of respect for the mission of our armed services, which exist in part to protect Democratic values.

In 1909, enlisted men and officers were subject to command authority of the most arbitrary type—to men whose primary goal was to make sure that order, discipline, conformity to rules and loyalty to one’s unit were paramount. A person’s innocence and guilt could be less important to those in command than the good of the service. Although there is now a Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces with three civilian judges who do not have life tenure, before 1951 this court did not exist.

Civil law provides for impartial judges, indictment by a grand jury, and due process. But some Americans’ rights as civilians, including  complete freedom of expression, are given up by those who join the military. Formal and unspoken rules about free expression exist for military personnel because the need for absolute loyalty to one’s leader is so essential for an effective fighting force. No disrespect may be shown to superior commissioned officers or to high-ranking government officials from the president on down. For many months the media in the United States has focused on how much command authority the executive branch of the government should have over individual rights.

Should situations exist in which loyalty trumps truth?  As was true 100 years ago, many face this question inside courts martial or courts of inquiry. The insularity of military personnel from the civilian world—considered necessary but now under increasing scrutiny—could certainly encourage military witnesses to justify silence or a memory lapse during a court proceeding for the good of the service. Enlisted men and women are under orders to be absolutely loyal to their superior officers; all Marines, for example, put loyalty to their band of brothers first. Testifying against them could put them in conflict with what they have been trained to do.

From Rosa Sutton to Mary Tillman

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For the American press and its readers, Rosa Sutton came to represent every mother who had lost a son in the military and sought the facts about his fate. This dilemma resonates as strongly today as it did in the decade before World War I. — [A Soul on Trial pg. 303]

It is ironic that citizens from patriotic military families are at times forced to confront an institution that defends democratic values—and yet  the privileges and guarantees of our Constitution are not always applicable to service members themselves. Rosa Sutton and Pat Tillman’s mother, Mary, each made her case in the same way by using the media and appealing to Congress. The Sutton case is quintessential American story, possibly the first of its kind.  Rosa Sutton became an iconic figure to her fellow American citizens and began to relish that role.  Today, there are several mothers fighting to get the truth from the military—in many cases from the army. The language these mothers are using and the hurdles they face exactly parallel Rosa Sutton’s challenges a hundred years ago. None of these mothers wanted to go to the media or to appeal to Congress. But these are the two primary sources of support they have.

Like Rosa Sutton,  Mary Tillman  and her family have tried to learn the truth about what happened to Pat in a case in which lapses of memory –  convenient or genuine –help shield  those who may have been responsible for his death in 2004.  The search for the truth about Tillman’s death may have only just begun; it may only be fully understood when misleading testimony can be weighed in the context of how military justice functions in the early 21st century, what private battles individual officers  and government personnel faced, what allegiances they had, and what personal and professional factors may have affected their recollections.

The Power of the Press

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“Governmental actions should be neither secret nor unjust. . . . If we cannot get justice through the courts, every newspaper in the United States shall have the facts as we have them and then see what the opinion of the world will be.” osa Sutton [A Soul on Trial pgs. 183, 62]

Rosa Sutton’s statements reveal why this story mattered so much a century ago—and why it should now. The need for governmental transparency on matters unrelated to national security is central to democracy. In this case, the secret element was what was not examined and what was not said at the 1907 investigation into Sutton’s death (or what was not in the official record).  Secrecy is often behind a person’s alleged failure of memory when that failure is convenient. And Americans’ weapons against government reticence have long been their journalists.

In this case, an unknown Oregon housewife had opportunities in 1909 that her mother would not have had a generation earlier. At the end of the nineteenth century, the nation had become a neighborhood, and its newspapers proliferated. New modes of transportation and communication led to the exploding population of America’s cities. “Public opinion” was no longer confined to the educated middle classes—a vast urban and immigrant population now turned to morning, afternoon, and evening papers for information and entertainment. For reporters, the story of a heartbroken mother confronting a military bureaucracy proved irresistible; the paranormal aspects of the Sutton story only added to its potential to fascinate.

It was the job of the papers—the only media at that time—to be guardians of democracy and the legal system that is key to making democracy work. A century ago, men and women, including public figures, depended on the newspapers for the most basic information—even information about their own family members. Telephones were still not used widely. In a very real sense, the press corps became a third protagonist in this story.

Rosa Sutton’s story would compete for attention on the new wire services with the Wright brothers’ daring flights, urban calamities, or any one of several grisly criminal trials. All the major New York papers followed her campaign, including respectable ones such as the staid Evening Post and the New York Times, The case also stimulated the decade-old circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal.

The Power of Public Opinion

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The influence of a gaping and curious public can have no effect on the conduct of the Judge Advocate in this matter. . . . The hallowed grave of a dead son is no more sacred than the grave of a military reputation and there are a great many military reputations at stake in this hearing.

—Major Harry Leonard [pg. 176]

Major Leonard proved to be a formidable judge advocate and an ideal one to handle Rosa Sutton in what began as an impartial investigation into the facts surrounding Sutton’s death. As it turned out, Rosa needed to be handled—she was strong minded and just as determined as he was to defend values that were (and are) sacred to a large number of Americans. So Leonard had a plan to attack her credibility. But the “curious public” did have a strong influence on his actions at the inquiry in the summer of 1909. Both of his comments reveal his concern about his own reputation, and his awareness that his job was to be impartial; at the same time, as a Marine Corps officer, his actions were also driven by his loyalty to his fellow Marines. This is a timeless conflict that has long governed the exigencies of military justice and it plays out in this case in a way that makes the subject fascinating and telling.

America’s service academies—then as now—are always scrutinized more than any other institutions of higher education in this country. Because so many citizens had a stake in what happened in this case, the government’s representatives fought for the hearts and minds of Americans inside this military courtroom. The Marines’ code of conduct was just as important to them as Rosa Sutton’s mission was to her. So the nation’s newspapers shaped the dialogue and the lawyers’ closing arguments both wthin the courtroom and outside of it.

Honesty and Public Officials

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We need absolute honesty in public life; and we should not get it until we remember that truth telling must go hand-in hand with it, and that it is quite as important not to tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to tell the truth about one who is not decent.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Outlook, May 12, 1900 [pg. vii]

Roosevelt’s comment underscores a major theme in A SOUL ON TRIAL and an issue that preoccupies Americans—today even more than a century ago. It seems particularly important right now as our national discourse has centered on issues of honesty among public officials for much of the past six years. There is a certain irony to the fact that Rosa Sutton was not able to secure a second hearing during the Roosevelt administration; she and the president would have had an interesting dialogue with each other. In many ways she was just the type of feisty, determined individual he respected; but she was taking on an institution that he admired and had a very personal interest in—America’s Navy.

The more documents I read related to this case, the clearer it became how complex it was to decipher the truth in the face of conflicting testimony from men and women who experienced the tragedy differently, and saw the truth through the lens of his or her own belief system. The dichotomy between reality and memory became critical in weighing the evidence—primarily the marines’ testimony—in this case. What motivates people to say the things they do or to refrain from saying certain things? Finding that out is part of the job of a historian as well as a prosecutor or a detective or (even a psychologist). And sometimes it’s impossible to do that without the perspective of time passing.   Only decades after an event occurs–  perhaps after all the participants in an event have died –  can certain types of personal questions be explored  revealing why people reacted the way they did during a crisis.