Charles Guiteau Trial - Significance, Guiteau Takes Revenge On Garfield For An Imaginary Insult, Was Guiteau Insane?, Insanity Plea

Charles Guiteau Trial - Significance

Guiteau's trial was one of the first murder trials in which the defendant's claim of insanity was subjected to the modern legal test: namely, whether or not Guiteau understood that his actions were wrong. Less than 20 years after Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, the United States would see another president assassinated. James A. Garfield, a Union major general, had a distinguished m…

Charles Guiteau Trial - Further Readings

Charles Guiteau Trial - Guiteau Takes Revenge On Garfield For An Imaginary Insult

Guiteau never had any position of importance in the Garfield campaign except in his own mind. Guiteau's behavior had always been erratic, and it is possible that he contracted venereal diseases that further aggravated his mental problems. He was inspired to write a speech, which he hoped that Garfield would use in a debate with the Democratic presidential candidate, W. S. Hancock. Garfield never e…

Charles Guiteau Trial - Was Guiteau Insane?

Once Garfield was dead, the government could finally try Guiteau for murder. The trial opened on 14 November 1881, in the District of Columbia. The U.S. attorney general, Wayne MacVeagh, determined to secure a conviction, named five lawyers to the prosecution team, including E. B. Smith and George Corkhill, who was also the District of Columbia's district attorney. Corkhill summed up the prosecuti…

Charles Guiteau Trial - Insanity Plea

The insanity defense has been mounted by criminal defendants for several centuries. In fourteenth century England, the insanity plea was available to a person who was "deprived of and memory so as not to know what he [was] doing, no more than an infant, a brute, or a wild beast." England later fashioned the M'Naghten rule, which allowed the insanity defense if the defendant did not know what she w…