1903 Shooting Case Was the O.J. Simpson Trial of Its Day

As arguments over the validity and admissibility of DNA testing continue to unfold in the O.J. Simpson trial, so does one of the most striking coincidences in U.S. legal history.

For it was in another Los Angeles courtroom nearly 100 years ago that a now universally accepted form of scientific evidence--ballistics--first was introduced in an American criminal trial.

Nor do the parallels end there. Like the Simpson case, the earlier trial was the object of unprecedented media attention and involved one of the era’s most famous defense attorneys, Earl Rogers, who used the infant science of ballistics to prove that his clients--three police officers--were innocent of the murders of a father and son.

The killings occurred in the midst of a local newspaper war and, as coverage of the case snowballed, many Angelenos were convinced that “our noble boys in blue” were guilty.

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At the turn of the century, Los Angeles was enmeshed in an endless cycle of scandals. Police were often depicted as bumblers, bribe-takers or both. One newspaper called the three accused officers “desperadoes in uniform,” “coldblooded assassins” and “bloodthirsty morons.”

The case began on Dec. 17, 1903, when three Los Angeles police officers--Bert Cowan, Johnny Murphy and J. J. Hawley--shot and killed two allegedly unarmed horse thieves, Joe and Louis Choisser.

The father and son had apparently purchased a herd of horses and mules in Illinois with a bad check for $1,500 and sold the animals before arriving in Los Angeles with their profits and no intention of making their check good.

The sheriff of Harding County, Ill., issued a warrant for their arrest and sent a telegram to Los Angeles Police Chief Charles Elton, offering a $50 reward for their capture.

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Police determined that the pair were staying at the Hotel Broxburn on 5th Street between Hill and Broadway. Officers Hawley and Murphy nervously awaited the Choissers’ return in a cramped third-floor bathroom, while Cowan staked out the hotel’s back entrance.

When the father and son arrived, the officers knocked on the Choissers’ door. A furious gun battle began when one officer yelled, “Open up in the name of the law.” Joe Choisser soon lay dead in the room and his son in the corridor.

The officers would later testify that Joe Choisser was sitting on the bed with his back to them when they kicked the door open. As Choisser reached for his gun, which was lying on the bed, Hawley lunged forward and tried to grab it. A struggle followed.

Then Choisser reportedly yelled, “Kill them Lou, kill them!” From behind the bedroom door, Lou Choisser opened fire, barely missing the officers, who had begun shooting as they backed out of the room.

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Joe Choisser was killed with one bullet through his heart. In his pocket was $1,700 cash.

When Cowan heard the shots, he came running up the back stairway, just in time to see Lou Choisser shooting at Murphy and Hawley in the hallway.

Cowan shot young Choisser in the back while two of Murphy’s bullets hit him in the chest. Choisser died instantly.

It appeared to be a simple case of three cops killing two armed crooks who resisted arrest. The gunfire itself was not enough to make the front page of a newspaper in those bawdy days. But in an era of circulation wars and yellow journalism, one paper’s headlines the next day read: “Cops Kill Two in Cold Blood” although another newspaper headline reported: “Criminals Opened Fire on Officers.”

Public pressure built, and the officers were arrested and charged with murder. To make matters worse, the Choissers’ guns disappeared and a hotel guest became a star prosecution witness, testifying that he never saw the Choissers fire at all.

Rogers, the city’s best-known defense attorney, decided that because of all the media attention, finding an impartial jury would be next to impossible. The only way he could win would be at a preliminary hearing, where he needed to convince only the judge.

The best detectives in the Los Angeles Police Department--for once working for the defense--combed the hotel’s corridor. They found bullet holes and bullets in the walls and door jamb opposite the Choissers’ room--marks the prosecution either failed to see or ignored.

At that time, all the books on the embryonic science of ballistics had been published only in German, which Rogers, a master of foreign languages, happened to read.

At the preliminary hearing, Superior Court Judge Joseph Fleischman Chambers seemed to be the only one with any interest in or knowledge of ballistics. Everyone else in the courtroom appeared bewildered, including prosecutors, who said that “ballistics had no more right in the courtroom than a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat.”

Rogers’ star witness, Jesse Hawley (not related to one of the defendants), a ballistics expert trained in Germany, offered to take bullets from any guns and match them correctly with the gun that had fired them. But the prosecution would not “descend to such nonsense.”

Hawley testified that in making a chemical analysis, he found that Los Angeles police bullets were made of solid lead with small amounts of copper fused into the nose. But the bullets found in Louis Choisser’s pocket, like the ones found in the wall and door jamb, had an element of tin mixed with the lead and lacked the copper ingredient of the police slugs.

Hawley also found in the wall a residue of the same oily substance that lubricated the Choissers’ bullets, while police bullets left a wax base in the holes.

The last significant piece of defense evidence was a picture taken shortly after the gunfight. It showed a pile of undisturbed dust that had collected on top of the transom above a hotel room door. It was through the open transom of the door that the prosecution’s star witness claimed to have witnessed the three officers gun down the two unarmed men.

The judge dismissed the charges.

The final headline about the case read: “Witness Admits Being in Pay of Yellow Journalism.”