Carrie Brown : Murder In The East River Hotel

  You might think that one of the three defense attorneys would have taken into consideration the fact that not only was Ali without any money to fund his appeal...but that they should have realized that they didn't have any financial support at the very time they were announcing to the world that they were planning to launch an appeal. 

 I never read this article before until this morning.

 Abe Levy revealed that prominent Philadelphians wrote letters supposedly disparaging Dr. Formad but only after the trial was over.  Formad was an esteemed professor at the University of Pennsylvania....in West Philadelphia.
One report, the name or the date of the paper I can't remember at the moment, had one of defense attorneys calling Formad, 'The prosecution doctor' because of all the cases in which he'd typically be a medical expert for the prosecution, mostly in Philadelphia. Two days before he died, he had just completed testifying at a trial in Pennsylvania.
Not surprisingly, to me, is the fact that any criticisms of Formad within these letters were never discussed again.

The letters probably wouldn't be used at the trial if they were personal opinions not facts anyway and not germane to the case at hand, unless the letters contained some sort of evidence that Formad had mismanaged evidence in the past in a similar sort of case.


Look at the size of the trial transcript and the cost to re-do it !!!
In 2023 dollars, that would be the equivalent of  $ 25,012.00..

Looks like the French Consulate, found looming in the shadows throughout the next ten years, didn't have the cash nor the courage of their convictions to fund an appeal for le bon homme de Algerie.


New York World
July 8, 1891
**********



Meanwhile, the NY Tribune praised the efforts of Flint & Formad

New York World
July 7, 1891
***********


It might be a coincidence, but the program I am watching at this moment, 'American Midnight' in the series, Phenomenon, is about a murder case in Arkansas in which the coroner was challenged for his determination in the deaths of two youths.  He had a shady history.
Not sure if you guys can access this on Tubi ( great channel if you can get it in Europe).

https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/478753/s01-e04-american-midnight?start=true

In this article, Formad testified that he never worked on the side of the defense in a trial....which is what one of the defense lawyers had said at the time of the trial, more or less.

Wilmington Morning News
Wilmington, Del.
May 8, 1901
***********

In a previous post, I shared an article which found Formad being asked whether he ever worked for the defense.

This article, which covers a case that took place after the Ali Trial, finds Formad testifying that the presumption of the prosecution was wrong and as a result the coroner jury found the man innocent.

This sort of thing might have happened frequently with Formad.  Here, he was only testifying as a coroner, not a 'hired gun' for a prosecution team.  Therefore, there might have been quite a few
cases where his testimony resulted in a jury finding an accused man innocent.  That's a lot different than the assumption that Formad always worked in conjunction with prosecutors.

It's in the PDF.

The North American
Philadelphia
August 7, 1891
*************