The Real Story

COMMENTARY

"This is a brutal tale of torture wrapped in a love story and a courtroom drama. It has the authenticity of Anatomy of a Murder and the pace of Grisham’s best stuff. It could only have been written by the real-life lawyer who handled the case.

—Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center

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Mr. Steadman has written a fast-paced courtroom drama that not only illuminates the palpable tension between a defendant and victims but also lays bare the internal conflict between the judge, counsel, law enforcement, and experts. The historically accurate discussion of domestic violence exposes residual issues that still draw a shadow over justice today. 

While the author often refers to his "luck,” preparation is the mother of luck. Every trial lawyer should enjoy reading how the author created his own luck through diligence and hard work.  

— Philip E. Rodgers Jr., 13th Circuit Court judge (retired

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I Killed Sam" is a page-turner from the beginning. In a society where intimate partner violence is so tragically misunderstood, Robert answers the question people need to stop asking, "why didn't she just leave."  

Even though half of all female homicide victims are killed by intimate partners, women are treated as criminals when forced to defend their lives against their abusers. In the court's eyes, if he dies, he becomes the victim, and she ends up spending several years, if not life, in prison. 

We desperately need more attorneys as passionate and knowledgable as Robert to represent women for the "crime of self-defense" after being in a "kill or be killed" situation with an intimate partner.  

Law school students, prosecutors, judges, criminal defense attorneys, social workers, and law enforcement should read this well-crafted work of fiction so we as a society will strive to obtain justice for women. 

—--Kelle Lynn, founder Justice Thru Storytelling, a nonprofit organization based in West Michigan that seeks to change the narratives of women who face imprisonment for defending themselves or their children from potentially deadly domestic violence.

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“I Killed Sam” is a breathtaking story of spouse abuse, planned murder and romance. Bob Steadman, a brilliant trial attorney, writes about his 1957 case highlighting discrimination against women. It should be required reading in law schools.

—Larry E. Lelito. Author of “True Hard,” his story of Vietnam.

This book is fiction although based on the trial of a battered wife I defended, who killed her abusive husband in 1957 with a shotgun while he was sleeping. The prosecution and defense were dominated by Michigan’s acceptance and support of spouse abuse, including rape, derived from old English law and biblical reference. Rape of a wife was specifically decriminalized in Michigan by what was called the marital exception rule (also referred to as marital exemption)—an abomination Michigan finally ended in 1989. Despite reform on rape, battered women who have killed their abusers are still being abused far too often by our court system.

For years the defendant women who killed their abusive spouse were routinely asked why they didn’t simply leave him. Recent studies have shown what the abused women already knew; that it’s unsafe, a step toward even more brutal abuse or even death. Fortunately, support groups for abused women have sprung up everywhere. Reporting abuse has been assisted by police training and legislation requiring investigations based on observations of abuse, even when the battered woman is afraid or refuses to complain.

For far too many years, self-defense has been the legal defense of choice and the acceptable basis for a plea to manslaughter in most cases where the abusive husband was killed by the battered wife. Reduction from first-degree murder to manslaughter has been considered the “best” result since it eliminates life in prison. The results have been seldom fair to the abused wife. Judges, without effective presentation of the abuse evidence since it was routinely excluded as inadmissible in support of self-defense, have treated the abused women as criminals rather than victims and meted out relatively long prison terms when there was a plea or conviction of manslaughter.

In the 1957 trial my reliance on two defenses, self-defense and irresistible impulse (temporary insanity), was a first-time, groundbreaking joinder of two essentially disparate defenses. Logically, a defendant who claimed self-defense could not reasonably claim irresistible impulse since it relied upon total loss of control. However, the joinder allowed presentation of our evidence of massive spouse abuse as part of the irresistible impulse defense. This trumped the prosecutor’s top card, his strenuous motion to exclude it as legally objectionable testimony inadmissible to support a claim of self-defense. The jury compromised, refusing the prosecution’s demand for a verdict of first-degree murder and finding her guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter.

Our success in presenting proofs of extraordinary spouse abuse led the judge to propose a sentence of probation without prison time. In an action stranger than fiction, my expert witness psychiatrist and I advised the judge she was inconsolable about her guilt for killing him and needed some kind of punishment so she could atone. The judge agreed and gave her only six months in the Detroit House of Correction. It was the best possible outcome for her. Since there was no appeal of the verdict, the use of the combined defenses was not noted or followed by subsequent defense counsel.

I did not have a love affair with my client. However, the trial got so much publicity, I was able to talk my flight instructor into breaking her hard-and-fast rule about not dating her students and she agreed to having coffee with me to discuss the ongoing trial. We were engaged soon afterward and married within just over a year. So, the trial did support a love affair and a fifty-six-year marriage.

As an avid canoer I wrote about the sad condition of the Flint River in those days from unrestrained dumping and treatment as an open sewer. I am pleased the years since have been extraordinarily better for the river. Dumping of waste has been almost completely eliminated. The high water of normal spring floods has scrubbed the formerly filthy banks clean. Deer feed and bed down beside the water sheltered by the high banks sporting dense growths of plants and trees. Sport fish and wildlife of all descriptions have returned to the much cooler and clearer water. The carp, still including occasional giants, obviously love it since they roll and splash in the shallow rapids. The river’s smell is sweet and clean. Ducks and geese abound and their persistent calling is a delightful addition to the river’s songbird chorus.