Aaron Burr: Address to the Court on Innocence of Treason

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Aaron Burr's Address to the Court on Innocence of Treason was given on March 31, 1807, during his federal trial for treason. A politician and Revolutionary War hero who served as the nation's third vice president, Burr was involved in what came to be known as the Burr conspiracy. With military aid from Great Britain, Burr believed that he could form a new nation out of America's western states and the Louisiana Territory, and he communicated his ideas to the Great Britain's ambassador. He participated in his defense at his federal trial, often asking questions of witnesses. Burr was an outstanding lawyer, and when speaking in court, he delivered his words in concise phrases; he sought to cut to the heart of an issue and lay its essentials bare.

While Burr was traveling in the western United States after the conspiracy came to light, he was arrested and brought to trial twice and was found not guilty twice. In this address to the court, he refers to the clause in the Constitution forbidding double jeopardy, whereby no one who has been tried once and found not guilty may ever again be tried for the same crime. He holds in this address that the federal government should not have the right to try him after two state courts had found him not guilty based on the same evidence that resulted in his federal indictment. He further suggests that he is not receiving a swift trial, as guaranteed by the Constitution. Three months after his arrest by federal authorities, the prosecution was not ready to take the case to trial, and Burr implies that such was the case because there was insufficient evidence to try him. He had been in jail for a long time, and he notes that he had been forbidden pen and paper for communicating with the outside world, including his lawyers. He had been wrongly kept from aiding in the preparation of his defense, yet he was ready to proceed immediately, while the prosecution was not. He should therefore be freed, he argues, because there obviously was not enough evidence to hold him. Further, he insists that his trying to flee the authorities in the western territories of the United States should not be held against him, because he had reason to fear for his life: He believed that troops under the command of Wilkinson would kill him in order to silence him.

Burr's frequent references to himself in the third person may cause more confusion in this document than any other. The court clerk who recorded events during a trial would often reconstruct what was said from shorthand notes. The opening statement concerning “Col. Burr” indicates that the court clerk is reporting on Burr's remarks in the third person, but if the entire document is the clerk's wording, then the clerk had a style that was more vigorous than would reasonably be expected from a clerk, as in this passage: “If he was to be prosecuted for such breach, he wished to know why he was brought to this place?… Why had he been debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper, and not even permitted to write to his daughter?” These seem much more likely to be Burr's own words than those of the clerk; it is possible that the clerk used Burr's own words for most of this document, while retaining a third-person point of view in keeping with his opening.