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Reviews
A SOUL ON TRIAL: A MARINE CORPS MYSTERY AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
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by Robin R. Cutler
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| Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, Maryland, 2007. Illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 382 pages. $26.95 cloth. |
| Rosa Sutton would like this book. It gives far more credence to her claims of seeing visions of her newly deceased son than did a 1907 military panel that dismissed them out of hand. Robin R. Cutler, author of this detailed account of the investigation into the death of Marine Lt. James "Jimmie" N. Sutton, allows readers to make up their own minds. |
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The twenty-two-year-old Sutton, who was from Portland, Oregon, was shot dead during a brutal fight with other young Marines outside their barracks in Annapolis, Maryland, on October 13, 1907. After what appeared to be a slip-shod investigation, U.S. Navy investigators initially ruled that Sutton committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. At home in Portland, however, Rosa Sutton claimed to have received a post-mortem visit from her son, during which he told her he was murdered and revealed several details about the fight she presumably could not otherwise have known. |
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An overriding concern for Rosa Sutton, a Roman Catholic, was her belief that suicide was a mortal sin. She found the idea of suicide incomprehensible because Jimmie had told her of his excitement at having been recently assigned to President Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet for an upcoming voyage of major importance. |
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The author suggests, with good reason, that the Navy was concerned from the outset with protecting its reputation, already tarred by hazing incidents at the nearby Naval Academy. A murder among its young Marine officers, most of whom were from prominent families, would be a public relations disaster. The Suttons, who resided in a comfortable five-bedroom home on Northwest Portland's Hoyt Street, were also well-connected. |
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Using information from her visions, but without emphasizing them publicly, Rosa Sutton created enough doubts about the Navy's initial finding, and pulled enough strings, that the new administration of President William Howard Taft ordered a second and more thorough investigation. Held before a Navy panel in Annapolis in the summer of 1909, the hearings into Sutton's death took on the atmosphere of a trial, during which another Marine with a strong dislike for Sutton was named as someone who might have fired the fatal shot. |
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Young Sutton was no saint, the author is quick to note. He was a Naval Academy dropout with a fondness for fighting, guns, and probably also alcohol, and he was possessed of a personality that apparently won him few friends. |
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The new hearings became a national sensation, with newspapers from Portland to New York City siding with Rosa Sutton's allegations of a cover-up. In the end, the mother's visions and suspicions, shared privately in correspondence that later became public, were mocked at the hearing and served to bolster the Navy's case that Sutton had not been murdered. But other evidence was presented that justice had not been done, including expert testimony that Sutton could hardly have shot himself in the head during the fight because he was lying face down on the ground with others on top of him. |
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It would be giving away too much to reveal the ending to this story, which few would recall today. Cutler's well-written and painstakingly researched account is a page-turner with surprises throughout. Events are organized chronologically, and background is provided where needed, such as on paranormal experiences, military justice, and the politics of the time. Cutler also waits until an epilogue to disclose her reasons for writing this book, a surprise ending of its own. |
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| R. Gregory Nokes
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| West Linn, Oregon |
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