house was besieged by racial epithets and stones. At least one window was broken. Then, someone fired a shot from a second-floor window. One man, Leon Breiner, was killed and another man wounded. Dr. Ossian Sweet, his wife Gladys, both of his brothers and the seven other residents of the house were arrested and charged with murder.
The Judge presiding over the case, Frank Murphy, went on to become a justice of the United States Supreme Court. He had a reputation for being liberal and a humanitarian.
The NAACP recruited the most famous criminal lawyer of the day, Clarence Darrow, to lead the defense. He was reportedly motivated to participate, not only because of his commitment to racial justice but also by Detroit’s proximity to Canada, a land where Prohibition did not exist. “Even before the Civil War the runaway slaves would come to Detroit, for this city was in sight of the Union Jack which was flying beyond the river, in Windsor, Canada. To the footsore slave fleeing from his master, the Union Jack was the emblem of freedom, just as it is today for the thirsty,” he said.
The Defense faced several challenges. The crowd had been angry and tense but had never tried to enter the Sweet’s house. Under Michigan law, self-defense would be difficult to prove. The gunfire reportedly came in a volley. The firearms had been stockpiled. Breiner had been shot in the back, meaning that it was unlikely that he was an aggressor.
The prosecution, however, was not without its hurdles to overcome. The seventy eyewitnesses Prosecutor Toms called, seemed to belie the government’s contention that only a small group had gathered outside and did not surround the house. Darrow also made clear through cross-examination that the witnesses had been coached to testify to the crowd’s peaceable nature. Since no one could prove who fired the shot, the government was forced to proceed on a conspiracy theory to obtain a conviction.
A trial began on October 30th, 1925 for all eleven defendants. This trial ended in a mistrial when the all-male, all-white jury was unable to reach a verdict. The retrial began on April 19th, 1926. This time, the only defendant was Henry Sweet, Ossian’s brother. The Defense had changed their tactics and demanded that the defendants be tried separately. The Prosecution chose to begin with Henry’s case. He had admitted to firing a gun, although claimed to have shot high to disperse the angry mob.
As part of the Defense case, Darrow called Dr. Ossian Sweet. The lawyer asked him to describe his state of mind. Dr. Sweet answered, “[w]hen I opened the door and saw the mob I realized I was facing the same mob that hounded my people throughout its entire history.” Through questioning, Darrow drew a picture for the white, male jury of the mindset of those inside the house. The prosecution objected to the testimony going back across Dr. Sweet’s entire life. Darrow argued that the defendant’s actions could only be understood through a psychology built upon his history. The judge sided with the Defense. Permitting this psychological “state of mind” evidence was extremely rare at the time.
In closing, Clarence Darrow asked the white men comprising the jury to become African-American.
“Now, let us look at these fellows. Here were eleven colored men, penned up in the house. Put yourselves in their place. Make yourselves colored for a little while. It won’t hurt, you can wash it off. They can’t, but you can; just make yourselves black men for a little while; long enough, gentlemen, to judge them, and before any of you would want to be judged, you would want your juror to put himself in your place. That is all I ask in this case, gentlemen. They were black, and they knew the history of the black.
The jury did, acquitting Henry Sweet. The District Attorney subsequently dropped the charges against the other defendants.
The Sweets’ story does not have a storybook ending. Gladys Sweet died of tuberculosis, a disease she believed that she contracted while in jail. Ossian Sweet committed suicide in 1960. Henry also died of tuberculosis.
The case 