Maria Barbella Trials: 1895-96

The jury took less than an hour to find Barbella guilty. On July 18, Judge Goff sentenced her to be taken to Sing Sing state penitentiary and executed. News of the sentence transformed the case into a national sensation. Philanthropist missionary Rebecca Foster and an expatriate American, the Countess di BrazzA, hired new lawyers for Barbella and organized a petition drive. Thousands of signatures poured into New York governor Levi Morton's office, asking him to pardon the immigrant woman or, at least, commute her death sentence. The execution was effectively halted when an appeal was filed on her behalf.

Frederick House, Barbella's new lawyer, requested a new trial before New York's state court of appeals. House argued that the state had offered no evidence of any premeditation. House accused Judge Goff of multiple errors, such as excluding testimony critical of Cataldo's character and misleading the jury about the facts of the case. House said that the judge erred in charging that only Barbella's acts could be used to weigh her mental condition. Most significantly, House characterized Goff's jury charge as a direct instruction to return a guilty verdict.

On April 21, 1896, the court of appeals agreed. Barbella was granted a new trial on grounds that the defense had not been allowed to use all the evidence at their disposal. The lengthy appellate decision ruled that Judge Goff's charge to the jury was riddled with serious errors and reflected a troubling lack of impartiality from the bench.

When the retrial began on November 17 before a new judge, H. A. Gildersleeve, the defense made a concerted effort to establish that the Barbella family had a history of mental instability and alcoholism. Numerous Italian witnesses who knew the families of Barbella's parents were called. It became clear that her ancestors and all of her siblings had suffered from seizures, some of them fatal. In testimony that was not allowed during the first trial, Barbella's parents testified that Maria had once tried to commit suicide by leaping from a roof and remembered nothing after she was restrained. Her mother was also allowed to recount the abuse Maria had suffered at Cataldo's hands.

The defendant apparently shared her family's mental problems. "Sometimes I feel a machine in my head and the pain is so great I cannot stand it," she said. The defense benefited from her new ability to speak English, which she learned at Sing Sing with the help of the warden and his wife. She stated that she had planned to drown herself if Cataldo rebuffed her final request for marriage. She had taken the razor to hasten her own death after jumping into the river. Despite hours of grueling cross-examination by prosecutors, she insisted that she loved Cataldo and had no memory of what had happened following his comment about "pigs," apart from a red flash and an overwhelming heat in her head.

The defense also introduced the fact that Cataldo was carrying a knife when he was killed, which was confirmed by police reports. Character witnesses included Julia Sage, the wife of Sing Sing's warden, who had come to know the immigrant woman well. Mrs. Sage testified that in her judgment Barbella was incapable of committing a premeditated murder.

During nine days of medical testimony, doctors testifying for the defense presented a scenario in which Barbella had killed Cataldo during a brief fit of epilepsy, triggered by the shock of his "pigs marry" dismissal. The prosecution's experts contended that Barbella was in full control of her faculties. Yet defense attorney House concluded his final argument by steering the burden of proof toward the prosecution. "The only truth here is that Maria Barbella suffers from epilepsy. Distressed at Domenico's insults and unaware of her own illness, she killed a man whom, at any rate, the city will not miss."

As swiftly as the earlier jury had found her guilty, Barbella was found not guilty on December 10. She was freed immediately. Instead of facing the electric chair, she used another recent invention, the telephone, to call Mrs. Sage and the Countess di BrazzA with the news.