Jimmie Sutton always wanted to become an engineer, specifically a naval engineer.
Sutton received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, but he left in 1904. His next stop was the Marine Corps School of Application, a precursor to Officer Candidates School and The Basic School. Sutton became a second lieutenant, which was his rank on the early morning of October 13, 1907—the night he died on the academy’s grounds after brawling with other aspiring officers.
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The circumstances of Sutton’s death form the basis of historian Robin R. Cutler’s book, “A Soul on Trial: A Marine Corps Mystery at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” A naval inquest arrived at a quick conclusion, determining Sutton shot himself in the head. His mother vigorously disputed that finding. Devoutly Catholic, Rosa Brant Sutton knew that the church considered suicide a sin, depriving her son of eternal salvation and his place in heaven unless she could prove otherwise.
Rosa believed Jimmie never would have taken his own life. She had to do something, especially after she claimed her dead son appeared to her in a vision and implored her to clear his name. There had to be another reason. Had one of the others there that tragic night accidentally (or intentionally) shot him?
Rosa pushed the Navy to reopen the investigation, and her tireless efforts finally paid off in 1909 when a Court of Inquiry reconsidered what actually happened to Jimmie Sutton.
A Story Hidden from History
This is not the first time that Cutler has written about the Suttons’ quest for military justice. In 2007, her publishing company released a hardcover version of “A Soul of Trial,” but it was more of an academic text and not intended for a wider audience, Cutler recently told We Are The Mighty.
Cutler considered updating the story over the years to make it more accessible, but first, she had to acquire the rights. Amid that process, author and former Navy commander Claude Berube—then the director of the Naval Academy Museum—suggested the possibility of turning the book into a play. The idea intrigued Cutler, and although it never made it to the stage, those efforts weren’t totally lost.
After she finally reacquired the rights to “A Soul on Trial” last year, updating the book became a real possibility.
“It’s been fascinating,” Cutler said. “I really never in my life thought that I would end up spending probably a total of 12 years on this story. This is one of those stories that’s hidden from history that nobody had ever heard of, even people who knew Naval Academy history.”
Bringing the Characters to Life
The characters in “A Soul on Trial” lived more than a century ago, so it became a challenge for Cutler to develop them. There are Lts. Harold Utley, Robert Adams, and Edward Osterman, who were among the men there on the night that Jimmie Sutton died. There are the other members of Sutton’s family. Maj. Henry Leonard, the Navy’s judge advocate at the Court of Inquiry, is a key player too. Leonard lost his left arm at the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, when he saved the life of future Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler.
“These people sort of became very much alive to me,” Cutler said.
Rosa Sutton, Cutler’s great-grandmother, certainly did.
Sutton was 49 years old when the Court of Inquiry began. Despite taking on the Navy, she deeply respected the military. Her older brother and son-in-law were in the Army, Cutler said, and Jimmie’s younger brother, Don, attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
High-ranking men in uniform, though, did not intimidate Rosa. The seventh of 12 children, she possessed uncommon strength. Rosa fought the establishment at a time before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, women generally couldn’t serve on juries, and they couldn’t attend military service academies.
Her claims that Jimmie—who was liked by some, disliked by others and died at the age of 23—visited her after his death made some question her assertions.
“The fact that she felt she was seeing visions of her son, wherever they came from, made it hard to let go of some of her preconceptions about what happened to Jimmie,” Cutler said. “Eventually, she began to realize that some of the things she believed probably hadn’t been true. But the other thing that was intriguing to so many people back then is that several of the things that she thought happened to Jimmie actually were true…. The subject of her visions is something one can talk about for ages. It’s so complicated.”
Mothers Who Fought for the Truth
The updated edition of “A Soul of Trial” contains an epilogue that spotlights three Gold Star mothers who, like Rosa Sutton, pressed the military for accountability in their sons’ deaths. U.S. service members Pat Tillman—who played for the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals—Jesse Buryj, and Kenneth Ballard died within a 5½-week span in 2004.
In each instance, the military initially pushed a false narrative to Mary Tillman, Peggy Buryj, and Karen Meredith, respectively, about what happened to their sons.
The Pentagon led the Tillmans to believe that Pat died during an ambush in Afghanistan. It later revealed he died in a friendly fire incident. The Buryjs were told in the immediate aftermath of Jesse’s death that their loved one died when a truck rammed his Humvee. In reality, he also was the victim of friendly fire. Finally, the Army told Meredith that Ballard was killed in action, which wasn’t the case. He died because of an accidental machine gun discharge.
Cutler felt the connective tissue linking those grieving mothers to Rosa Sutton. They all displayed courage and experienced frustration in their quest for the truth.
“One of the big things motivating [Rosa] is that she got angry,” Cutler said. “She thought the military let them down by the initial short investigation. It wasn’t just trying to get Jimmie to heaven. It was the whole comfort with the military and then feeling let down by what happened.”
What Really Happened?
Less than a week before his death, Jimmie Sutton wrote to his mother with some exciting news. He informed her he was going to sail around the world as part of President Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet.
Sutton never made it, leaving behind a hole in his family it couldn’t fill. While witnesses provided conflicting testimony, the Court of Inquiry had to issue a ruling. What it decided did not please Rosa. It did not stop her, either.
How Jimmie really died is ultimately left up to the reader’s interpretation of the facts that Cutler lays out. What does the author of “A Soul on Trial” think?
“I don’t think he shot himself, but I also don’t think there was a conspiracy to do him in….,” Cutler said. “I think it was in a fit of fury that one of the other guys probably shot him, but I have no way of proving it anymore than the book shows.”
Paperback and e-book versions of “A Soul on Trial” are currently available.
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