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Biases Against Birchall
Despite much of the evidence against Reginald Birchall
being circumstantial, he appeared to be doomed from the
beginning. In his autobiography, which he completed while
incarcerated, he described the jury’s bias against him. Forty
out of seventy-two jurors called to the trial expressed their
prejudiced opinions towards him due to his criminal
background.
Unfortunately, during this period of history criminality was
sometimes assumed based on physical appearance alone. It
was believed by some that a person’s criminal nature could
be determined by certain physical characters of the face.
Detective Murray may have fallen into this train of thought
as he stated in his account of the trial that he inferred
Birchall was a criminal at first glance when they met for
questioning before he was named primary suspect.