Congratulations to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who responded to importuning senators by letting Justice Samuel Alito respond for himself. Justice Alito’s reply on Wednesday: He has “an obligation to sit” on cases under the Supreme Court’s code of conduct.

Sens. Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse, the bully boys of the Judiciary Committee, wrote the Chief Justice last week demanding a meeting and that Justice Alito recuse himself from hearing cases related to the 2020 election or Donald Trump.

As the senators know, the Court’s code stipulates that individual justices make their own recusal decisions. Thus the Chief was right to let Justice Alito respond for himself, if he chose. His letter gives the senators more courtesy than they deserve given their clear partisan motivation and their attempt to violate the separation of powers.

Justice Alito cites the Court’s code of conduct provision that “A Justice is presumed impartial and has an obligation to sit unless disqualified.” And a justice should disqualify himself only when “the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.”

The two senators are the most biased people on the planet regarding the Court. Their complaint is that a pair of flags flown at Justice Alito’s homes suggest partiality. But the justice explains in some detail that the decision to fly the two flags was made by his wife, who has her own mind and right to free speech, and that the justice had nothing to do with her decisions.

Martha-Ann Alito “makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so,” Justice Alito writes. “She has made many sacrifices to accommodate my service on the Supreme Court, including the insult of having to endure numerous, loud, obscene, and personally insulting protests in front of our home that continue to this day and now threaten to escalate.”

Who can doubt this given the tenor of the times and the threats against the justices from the likes of Sen. Whitehouse and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer? One maniac stalked the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“A reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal,” writes Justice Alito. “I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request.”

Congratulations to Justice Alito for responding with cool reason to an unreasonable demand. And to the Chief Justice for respecting the Court’s code of conduct in not responding for his colleague. Maybe the senators will read the code — not that they care about anything except smearing the justices.

— The Wall Street Journal

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NICOLE CHUNG: Celebrates publication of the paperback edition of “A Living Remedy,” her memoir of family, class and grief. Chung, who is of Korean descent, grew up in a white Oregon town and was a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast. No longer the only Korean there, she found community and the life she’d longed for. When her parents died within a year of one another, she was led to explore family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy. Chung lives near Washington, D.C., and made her debut with the bestselling “All You Can Ever Know.” She will be in conversation with Chris Stedman, writer, activist and professor in the religion and philosophy department at Augsburg University. 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 5, SubText Books, 6 W. Fifth St., St. Paul.

(Courtesy of Penguin Random House)
Patrick Nathan (Courtesy of Penguin Random House)

PATRICK NATHAN: Launches “The Future Was Color,” a novel about the link between the personal and the political set against the decadence of Hollywood and post-World War II Los Angeles, seen through the eyes of a man who must navigate the McCarthy-era film studio system, the life of closeted men along Sunset Boulevard, and the inability of the era to cleave love from persecution and guilt. In conversation with fellow Minnesotan Mark Haber, whose forthcoming novel “Lesser Ruins” is published by Coffee House Press. 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 4, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls. (Reservations are requested for all Magers & Quinn programs. Go to magersandquinn.com/events.

UCHE OKONKWO: Discusses “A Kind of Madness” with Lesley Nneka Arimah. 7 p.m. Thursday, June 6, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

RICHARDSON/WILSON: Bruce Richardson and Raymond Wilson present “Brothers,” about how a Black man and a white man became brothers when they were in their 70s, a half-century after they served separately in Vietnam where Ray was a helicopter pilot and Bruce an Airborne Ranger. 7 p.m. Monday, June 3, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

CARVELL WALLACE: Presents “Another Word For Love” in conversation with Junauda Petrus. 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 5, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

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Literary calendar for week of May 26

Polly had fled into sleeting rain, leading a low-speed chase through the back paths and forests of Staten Island. She was eight months pregnant, cold and wet, and accused of murder. —  from “The Witch of New York”

We’re introducing you today to “The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Journalism.” Written by former Minnesotan Alex Hortis (Pegasus Crime, $29.95), it is a riveting account of the sensational trials of the first American woman put on trial for capital murder that could have led to her execution by hanging.

Alex Hortis, (Courtesy of the author)

New York’s Staten Island was a sparsely populated, forested place in the mid-19th century. It was quiet until Christmas night, 1843, when the home of Capt. George Houseman in Granite Village was set on fire. In the rubble neighbors found the mostly charred bodies of Houseman’s 24-year-old wife, Emeline, and their infant daughter, Ann Eliza, under a bed in the kitchen. There were defensive wounds on one of Emeline’s arms and other evidence showing she might have been tied up.

The new “penny press” rushed to accuse the victim’s sister-in-law, Mary “Polly” Bodine, of the crime. She was the last person to see the mother and child alive and her main accuser was Emeline’s father, John Van Pelt.

So begins the involving story of Polly Bodine, igniting a high-profile media circus featuring rival newspapers that tried to outdo one another in sensational reporting, including publication of a woodcut showing Polly leaving the kitchen where the victims were presumably burning.

“…the origins of tabloid justice — defined in this book as sensationalized and ethically problematic media that affects legal proceedings — can be traced back to the Polly Bodine case,” Hortis writes. “Tabloid justice would, one way or another, alter American law.”

The first of Polly’s trials was held in 1844 on Staten Island, where the Houseman and Van Pelt families were among the richest and most respected residents. It ended in a hung jury. The second, in Manhattan in 1845, brought a murder conviction. That trial fascinated high society women who dressed in their best to attend, treating it like a gala theater party. Polly’s conviction was then vacated on appeal by the New York Supreme Court, leading to the final trial in 1846 in Newburgh, about 70 miles north of New York City. There, she was finally acquitted. In all, Polly spent more than three years in jail cells.

Hortis, who grew up in St. Cloud and graduated from Macalester College, defines the penny press as “the first mass-produced newspapers meant for ordinary New Yorkers.” The leading competitors were Moses Yale Beach’s Sun and James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald.  “The Sun repeatedly ran rumors and weakly sourced stories about the defendant,” the author said in an interview sent by his publisher. “(The Herald) devoted considerable resources to covering every aspect of the case, and provided accurate daily reports of the trials. Nonetheless, the Herald unleashed a flood of prejudicial coverage attacking Polly Bodine.”

Polly herself was proud of the fact that she came from Staten Island’s founding families and was one of the prettiest women. But she was unconventional and that worked against her in the minds of many citizens. Married as a teenager, she left her alcoholic husband and returned to her family home. She drank gin and had an affair with George Waite, her son’s boss at an apothecary shop in Manhattan. She was pregnant with Waite’s child when the murders took place and her stillborn baby was delivered in her jail cell.

The prosecution argued that Polly committed the murders to steal from her sister-in-law $1,000 that had been left by her husband before he went to sea. But everyone in Polly’s family knew that money was kept in another household. For both prosecution and defense, the hole in the scenario was that coroners couldn’t be sure about the murders took place. If it was before or after Christmas Eve, Polly was off the hook. If it was Christmas Eve, she had no alibi.

During her trials Polly became gaunt, leading the Herald newspaper to depict her as a witch. She was most angry when that great conman P.T.  Barnum, never one to let compassion stand in the way of profits, advertised a full-sized likeness of her depicted as a witch in his American Museum.

“She was obsessed by Barnum’s wax witch,” Hortis writes. “She knew that every day streams of New Yorkers paid their quarter to gawk through a glass partition at what the American Museum billed as ‘a faithful representation of the celebrated POLLY BODINE.’ The three-dimensional, waxen monster had made a circus freak show out of her.”

Others in this colorful cast of characters include Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman, both of whom reported on the case, and James Fenimore Cooper, whose last novel (“The Ways of the Hour”) was inspired by Polly’s case. The author explains how coverage of the three trials led to the birth of contemporary true-crime writing and was the basis for what would become the Associated Press.

Hortis, a graduate of New York University School of Law who lives in Maryland, worked for James B. Jacobs, expert on the American Mafia, with whom he co-authored research articles. His first book, “The Mob and the City,” was about Mafia control of gay bars in New York.

It takes talent and plenty of research to write a nonfiction book like “The Witch of New York,” in which some information is repeated three times. But Hortis keeps it interesting for the reader through storytelling that includes day-to-day details that make the scenarios come to life — the looks of the courtrooms, dresses of the elegant New York ladies, the way Polly’s family stood by her, the backgrounds and appearances of lawyers for the prosecution and defense, and reporters writing their stories aboard swift boats that were carrying them from Staten Island to their Manhattan offices during the first trial.

Underlying the legal story are the 19th-century mores reflected in the penny presses, including Polly being viewed as a “fallen woman” and antisemitism in the way Jewish pawnbrokers were perceived when they testified that a woman who looked like Polly pawned some of the dead woman’s possessions.

Polly’s case was complicated and Hortis does a masterful job of telling a true crime story that keeps the reader guessing. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review

After almost four grueling years of trials, Polly lived quietly in comfort provided by her son until she died in 1892 as “the most infamous woman in America.”. She had outlived almost everyone involved in her trials, and her son and daughter were her only mourners.

Did Polly Bodine kill the sister-in-law and niece she loved? Did she need money badly enough to commit murder? Where was she on that Christmas Eve?  How much did the penny press influence the prospective jurors called for Polly’s trials?

Hortis lets readers make up their own minds. He doesn’t have to hit us over the head to realize that in 2024 we are still grappling with tension between some media and justice.

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The celebration was effectively over Thursday night, at least for the in-arena edition. Many of the Mavericks players had departed Target Center, as had all of the coaches — except for one.

There in the coaches’ locker room sat Dallas assistant coach Sean Sweeney, by himself, reveling in his team’s achievement.

“Everybody else is trying to get on the buses to get on the plane. I’ve got no rush, man,” said Sweeney, the St. Paul native who is Dallas’ defensive coordinator. “I’m just happy to enjoy it. It’s fun to be here after the games, especially when you’re winning.”

The Timberwolves shot 34% from the field in the first half of Game 5 in Minneapolis, while also committing nine turnovers en route to scoring just 40 first-half points. It was yet another Mavericks’ defensive masterpiece, which have become frequent occurrences over the past three months.

This one led to a 124-103 win that sealed the Western Conference title for Dallas.

“It was special, definitely. I think the way that the team played and the way they approached the series and, in particular, the game today, was really fun to be a part of,” Sweeney said. “And to win and go to the Finals is an awesome feeling. And to do it here in the hometown is even better, in front of friends and family.”

Sweeney experienced what’s a career peak to date, something Mavericks players fully recognized in the moment. In the closing minutes of the blowout Game 5 victory, everyone on the bench was cheering and screaming in Sweeney’s direction.

“It was great,” said Sweeney, a Cretin-Derham Hall and University of St. Thomas alum. “It was really nice and felt really good to have everybody so connected and excited to see the smiles on everybody’s faces with how much hard work they put in and how excited they are for the next step.”

Awaiting the Mavericks in the NBA Finals are the Boston Celtics, who sported the NBA’s top offense this season, averaging 1.22 points per possession. That number has barely decreased in postseason play. It’s another challenge, but Sweeney and Co. have answered every bell to date. In these playoffs, Dallas has silenced top-five offenses in the Clippers and Thunder. It largely flummoxed Minnesota in the West finals.

Heading into the series, Sweeney said Dallas wanted to stick tight on Minnesota’s primary three-point threats: Anthony Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns, Naz Reid and Mike Conley.

Towns shot 24% from deep for the series. Reid went 1 for 10 from deep over the final three games of the series, and Conley had just one triple in three of the five contests.

Sweeney said Dallas also wanted to make it as difficult as possible for Minnesota to reach the paint, and when it got there, have a firm understanding of what the Wolves wanted to do.

For instance, Dallas knew Edwards liked to go right to left to get to his left hand, or execute a left to right euro step. Sweeney also noted the Wolves have a larger magazine of packages than most teams, so the Mavericks tried to understand conceptually what the Wolves were trying to accomplish in their sets.

“Where their players want the ball and how they want to attack,” Sweeney said, “and then just giving them as much resistance as possible.”

As the series progressed, Dallas gained more information on where Minnesota was trying to go with kickout passes, so it could attempt to be more disruptive. On top of it all, a strict emphasis was placed on finishing possessions with defensive rebounds.

The plan was largely executed at a high level.

“They’ve done a great job of putting in the effort, being connected and making sure that they understand the game plan,” Sweeney said of the players. “And if we make a mistake with the game plan, they try to cover for us. We try to adjust when something needs to be adjusted. So the partnership that goes into it has been something really special thus far, and a lot of fun to be a part of.”

It’s what the coach has enjoyed most about this run to date. He savors being part of something bigger than himself. He loves that the Mavericks players want to see one another succeed. Sweeney never takes for granted that he gets to compete at the highest level, against and with the sport’s top coaches and players. Everything is heightened to yet another level this time of year, but as his dad taught him at a young age, “pressure is earned.”

“So it’s great to be in these situations that have the highest competition and the highest pressure and it’s exciting to see guys succeed,” he said. “Because coaching is teaching, and seeing your guys succeed is always great.”

Sweeney made the most of his time in his home state. He nabbed 12 tickets each to Games 1 and 2 and had 10 for the closeout Game 5. His brother and his family were at every game. The rest of the tickets were spread out from game to game. On the off day between the first two games, Sweeney hosted approximately 40 people for dinner at Mancini’s in St. Paul. The night before Game 5, he was at J.D. Hoyt’s in Minneapolis. He was grateful for all the support from family and friends.

“It was great. Fortunately, it wasn’t too bad on tickets,” Sweeney said. “No, it was great. It was fun. Happy to be here. Fortunate. Now, looking forward to getting ready for the next series.”

Because as great as this experience was, the job is not finished. Sweeney was asked if he’d stay in the Twin Cities on Thursday night to celebrate before returning to Dallas separate from the team on Friday. After all, there were seven days between the West finals and Game 1 of the NBA Finals.

Sweeney noted the Mavericks would’ve surely allowed such a plan had he requested it, but the coach had no intention of wasting a moment of prep for the biggest series of his professional career.

This was fun, but it was done. And now, it was onto the next one.

“Nah, I’m going to go back and get to it, man,” said Sweeney, who’d already started the Celtics scout. “I’m looking forward to it. Happy to be here. Don’t want to squander the opportunity.”

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NBA FINALS

Boston Celtics vs. Dallas Mavericks

Thursday: Dallas at Boston, 7:30 p.m.

June 9: Dallas at Boston, 7 p.m.

June 12: Boston at Dallas, 7:30 p.m.

June 14: Boston at Dallas, 7:30 p.m.

x-June 17: Dallas at Boston, TBA

x-June 20: Boston at Dallas , TBA

x-June 23: Dallas at Boston, TBA

x- if necessary