Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,113
simply immoral. Scoville countered by tracing the history of insanity in Guiteau’s family—from an uncle who had died in an asylum to several aunts, cousins, and even Guiteau’s own mother.
Before the trial had ended, thirty-six experts would testify on the subject of Guiteau’s sanity. Scoville placed most of his hope in a controversial but widely admired young neurologist named Edward Spitzka, who had studied in Vienna and Leipzig and was well known for openly questioning, even attacking, the most powerful psychiatrists in the nation. Even before meeting Guiteau, Spitzka had written in a medical journal that, if the defendant, “with his hereditary history, his insane manner, his insane documents and his insane actions were to be committed to any asylum in the land, he would be unhesitatingly admitted as a proper subject for sequestration.” In the courtroom, after Spitzka testified that he had examined Guiteau and found him to be insane, Scoville asked, “Did you have any question on that subject?” Without hesitating, Spitzka replied, “Not the slightest.”
Determined to drown out men like Spitzka, the prosecution brought to the stand nearly twice as many experts as the defense. The star witness for the prosecution was Dr. John Purdue Gray, the superintendent of the New York State Lunatic Asylum. Gray had spent two days interviewing Guiteau, and was convinced that his only ailment was moral depravity. “A man may become profoundly depraved and degraded by mental habits and yet not be insane,” he insisted. “It is only depravity.”
Guiteau listened to these testimonies with avid interest. Although he had pleaded insanity, he was anxious to make clear that he had been insane only at the time of the shooting—not before, and certainly not after. Now, he argued, he was as sane as any man in the courtroom. As Gray attempted to define insanity for the jury, explaining that it was a “disease of the brain, in which there is a … change in the individual, a departure from himself,” Guiteau abruptly broke in. “That is my case,” he said. “I shot the President on the second of July. I would not do it again for a million dollars, with the mind I have got now.”
The central question of the trial—whether or not Guiteau was insane—seemed to most Americans a waste of time. Insane or not, they wanted to see him hanged, at the very least. “Hanging is too good for you, you stinking cuss,” a Union veteran had written to him. “You ought to be burned alive and let rot. You savage cannibal dog.” A farmer from Maryland tried to accomplish what William Mason had failed to do. As the prison coach carried Guiteau from the courtroom back to the District Jail one day, he rode up on his horse, drew his pistol, and fired at the prisoner. Once again, the shot missed Guiteau, but left him terrified, with a singed hole in his coat.
The trial, punctuated by Guiteau’s constant outbursts and heightened by testimony from members of the Senate, the secretary of state, and, by letter, even President Arthur, finally ended on January 26, 1882. At 4:35 that afternoon, after more than two months of testimony, the prosecution rested. Less than an hour later, the jury returned with a verdict.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” the clerk called out, his voice harsh against the perfect silence of the courtroom, “have you agreed upon a verdict?” The foreman, a man named John Hamlin, replied that they had. “What say you,” asked the clerk. “Is the defendant guilty or not guilty?” “Guilty as indicted, sir,” Hamlin said.
Before Hamlin had even finished speaking, the courtroom erupted in thunderous applause. So deafening were the cheers that the bailiff’s shout for order could hardly be heard. When the crowd, under threat of expulsion from the courtroom, finally quieted, one voice alone rang out. “My blood be on the head of the jury, don’t you forget it,” Guiteau cried. “That is my answer.… God will avenge this outrage.”
Even after he had been found guilty and sentenced to death, Guiteau believed that he would be set free. It was only a matter of time—and presidential influence. He had already written to Arthur several times, demanding a full pardon, but after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his appeal, he wrote again. The letter was a window into Guiteau’s strained mind. “I am willing to DIE for my inspiration,” he wrote, “but it will make a terrible reckoning for you and this nation. I made you … and the least you can