Inside Anatomy of a Murder

This is a short excerpt from an upcoming episode of Flint Justice.

In this preview, Arthur Busch explores the real Michigan homicide case that inspired Anatomy of a Murder and the lawyer behind it, John D. Voelker—prosecutor, defense attorney, Supreme Court justice, and writer.

The full episode examines what this case still teaches us about jury trials, reasonable doubt, and the uneasy line between truth and proof.
 Full episode coming soon.

"Photography by Jim Hansen, LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress."

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Transcript

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In 1952, in the tiny town of Big Bay in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, an army lieutenant walked into the lumberjack tavern and shot the bar owner dead. He claimed the man had raped his wife. He did not deny pulling the trigger. The defense lawyer on that case was a local attorney named John D. Volcker. Instead of arguing self-defense, Volcker reached for a rare doctrine, temporary insanity, sometimes called irresistible impulse. His argument was that the shock and rage over his wife's alleged assault left the defendant unable to control his actions. After a hard-fought trial, the jury came back with a remarkable verdict, not guilty by reason of insanity. Within days, psychiatrist declared the defendant sane, and he walked free. Most lawyers would have moved on to the next file. Volcker didn't. He turned the case over in his mind, along with his years as a small town prosecutor, and decided he wanted to write a criminal trial the way it really was. Under the pen name Robert Traver, he wrote the novel Anatomy of a Murder, published in 1958. On its face, it follows a UP defense lawyer, Paul Biegler, as he defends a soldier who kills a bar owner accused of raping his wife. But the book is doing more than telling a whodunit. Volcker lets readers sit where lawyers sit. We see voix dir, evidentiary fights, strategy sessions, and the uneasy feeling when a client may not be telling you the whole truth. He refuses to resolve all the doubts, we're never completely sure who is lying, who is manipulating the insanity defense, or whether justice has actually been served. The jury reaches a verdict, but the reader is left to act as a second jury, deciding what to believe. The novel became a bestseller, and in 1959, Otto Preminger turned it into a film starring James Stewart, shot largely on location in Marquette County. To this day, many lawyers regard it as one of the most realistic courtroom dramas ever put on screen. Behind that story is Volcker himself. Born in 1903 in Ishpemming, he served for years as Marquette County prosecutor, then as a defense lawyer, and eventually as a Michigan Supreme Court Justice. All the while he wrote about law and about his other great love, trout fishing in the UP, under the Traver name. Anatomy of a Murder sits at the crossroads of those lives. It is part legal textbook, part moral puzzle, and part love letter to a specific place and legal culture. For communities like Flint and Genesee County, it raises questions that are still with us. How much should a community's outrage shape a verdict? What do we do with doubt? And what does justice mean when the law can never fully recreate what happened in a single violent night? This has been a short Flint Justice look at Anatomy of a Murder and the Man Who Wrote It. For a deeper dive into the real case, the novel, and John D. Volcker's Life on the Bench and on the River, check out the full length episode in the feed.