Daniel E. Sickles and the Insanity Defense (1859)
An anguished Daniel E. Sickles looked out the window of his fashionable townhouse on Washington,
D.C.’s Lafayette Square on a Sunday afternoon in February 1859 and saw Philip Barton Key waving a
handkerchief and looking toward the upstairs windows of the Sickles home. “That villain has just passed
my house,” he excitedly exclaimed to a confidant, George B. Woolridge. (Fontaine, Apr. 23, 1859;
Brandt 59-60).
Sickles, a congressman from New York, had suffered through the most difficult weekend of his 40 years.
Until a few days earlier, he thought himself a friend of Key, who was the chief prosecutor in the District
of Columbia and the son of Francis Scott Key, author of the national anthem. Sickles and his wife,
Teresa, had socialized with Barton Key, as he was known, and Sickles used his political connections to
help Key secure re-appointment as prosecutor when James Buchanan became president and replaced
Key’s original benefactor, President Franklin Pierce. (Brandt 11-17).
But Sickles had received an anonymous letter on Thursday, February 24, claiming that Key and Sickles’
much-younger wife, a belle of Washington society, were having illicit meetings. Key, a widower, owned
a house on C Street, but the anonymous correspondent maintained that Key had rented a house on
Fifteenth Street in Northwest Washington and regularly met Teresa Sickles there. On Friday, the
congressman, openly sobbing, sought Woolridge’s help in confirming this awful report. (Brandt 14, 104;
Keneally 71-72, 150). The whole town must know of this affair, Sickles speculated. (Fontaine, Apr. 30,
1859). Woolridge, a deputy clerk in the House of Representatives had known Sickles since the two
worked in the New York State Legislature in Albany. On Sickles behalf, Woolridge went to Fifteenth
Street and interviewed neighbors, who confirmed the regular liaisons by describing the dresses Mrs.
Sickles wore. (Trial 72; Brandt 101; Keneally 70-71). The adulterous affair substantiated, Sickles went
into a tailspin. On Saturday night, he confronted his wife and, after a loud and tearful argument, got her
to write and sign a “confession” of her relationship with Key. Their maid, Bridget Duffy, witnessed it.
(Brandt 109-10; Trial 42). Curiously, Mrs. Sickles, only 23 years old at the time, signed in her maiden
name, Teresa Bagioli. (Brandt 26, 110).
By Sunday morning, February 27, the congressman was skulking about the house, sobbing with his head
in his hands and tearing at his hair. (Trial 42, 46). He summoned Woolridge to the house. Still unable to
compose himself, his eyes bloodshot, the congressman clasped his temples and bowed his head. After
he spotted Key outside, he declared, “That fellow who just passed my house has made signals to my
wife,” and he left, armed with a revolver and two Derringers. (Fontaine, Apr. 30, 1859; Brandt 118).
He marched to the east side of the square, across the street from the White House, confronted Key and
fired a shot that only grazed his intended victim. (Brandt 121). Sickles declared, “You have violated my
bed,” (Trial 20), then reached for a second gun and fired again. This hit Key in the groin. As Key lay
against a tree, begging for mercy, Sickles shot him again in the chest , this time fatally. (Brandt 121).
Standing over Key’s lifeless body as witnesses came from nearby buildings, Sickles loudly repeated, “He
has dishonored and defiled my bed.” (Trial 20).
But after Key’s body was carried to a clubhouse on Lafayette Square, Sickles calmed himself. Witnesses
described him as “self-possessed,” “exceedingly cool” and “deliberate,” and he walked away quietly.
(Trial 80-82, 84).
When he returned to his house, however, he again became excited. In a rampage that lasted about ten
minutes, Sickles convulsively collapsed on a sofa, covering his face with his hands, screaming and
sobbing and declaring that his home and his six-year-old daughter had been dishonored. “His condition
appeared to me very frightful, appalling me so much that I thought if it lasted much longer, he must be
insane,” one witness in the home, Robert J. Walker, declared at Sickles’ trial. Walker considered
fetching a doctor. (Trial 40-41). Another witness, Felix McCluskey, described Sickles as groaning and
hollering. McCluskey thought the congressman not responsible for his actions: “By the state I saw Mr.
Sickles in, I thought he would kill every man, woman and child in the house.” (Trial 77).
But within 15 minutes, the assailant appeared to have restored his equilibrium. The maid, Ms. Duffy,
described him as “very much excited but not sobbing.” (Trial 47). Another man, Joseph Dudrow,
recalled, “I did not think Mr. Sickles was any more excited than any other man would be in a fight or
anything of that kind.” A police officer who arrived to arrest Sickles heard no shrieks or moans from the
defendant; in fact, the officer was offered a brandy before they left for jail.
Key, of course, was a man of influence in Washington. Besides being one of 11 children of the author of
“The Star-Spangled Banner”, he was a nephew of the Chief Justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney.
(Brandt 12; Keneally 66). Members of the family sought the appointment of a special prosecutor to try
the case, but their efforts were denied by the White House. Instead, Key’s deputy, Robert Ould, served
as chief prosecutor. (Keneally 154).
Sickles, too, had his connections. From New York’s Tammany Hall politics, he knew James T. Brady, a
criminal trial lawyer with more than 50 murder cases to his name. (Brandt 32; Keneally 151). And –
possibly with the assistance of President Buchanan – Sickles secured representation by a prominent
Washington lawyer, Edwin M. Stanton, who lived on the same street as Key and had just returned from
an important assignment as special counsel to the Attorney General to settle land claims in California.
(Gorham 46-54; Keneally 150, 154).1 “Stanton’s very face on the [defense] team gave Dan’s defense a
seriousness it might not otherwise have possessed.” (Keneally 151).
The team met at Stanton’s C Street home in order to devise a strategy for the case. The lawyers focused
on insanity as a means of claiming that Sickles was not responsible for his actions. (Keneally 152). It
was a relatively new concept in the criminal law at the time. A British case, In re M’Naghten, had
established the principle just 16 years earlier that a defendant was not responsible for his acts if, at the
time of the crime, he suffered from a mental illness that made him incapable of understanding either
the nature or consequences of his acts or that those acts were wrong. (2 Eng. Rep. 718 [H.L. 1843]). The
English court had held:
Every man is presumed to be sane and to possess a sufficient degree of reason
to be responsible for his crimes until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction,
1
Stanton later became Buchanan’s attorney general and secretary of war during the Civil War under President
Abraham Lincoln. (Pratt 99; Gorham 81, 120, 238-39). After the war, Stanton was nominated by President Ulysses
S. Grant for the Supreme Court and was promptly confirmed by the Senate, 46 to 11. (New York Times, Dec. 21,
1869). But he died three days later. (New York Times, Dec. 25, 1869).
and that to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved
that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring
under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the
nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not
know he was doing what was wrong.
Brady had invoked this standard in estate cases in the past, and, in criminal cases, he had used it to
argue that a defendant was permanently insane; i.e., both at the time of the crime and at the time of
trial. (Keneally 152).
But, of course, Sickles was elected to a high legislative office, and he certainly didn’t want to be depicted
to voters as insane. So, Brady conceived of the idea, and the defense team set out to claim to a jury,
that, although their client was now sane, at the time of the killing he suffered a mental impairment that
made him not responsible for his actions and that the prosecution would have to prove otherwise. This
was considered “revolutionary” at the time. (Brandt 172).
Defense lawyers made no opening statement when the trial commenced before Judge Thomas N.
Crawford in the D.C. Criminal Court on April 4, 1859, only a few short months after the killing. The
courtroom was “crowded to excess” with lawyers, legislators and citizens at large. (Trial 6; Fontaine,
Apr. 16 1859; Brandt 169). The case drew more press attention than any single incident to that time.
(Brandt 133). The eyes of the world were upon the case, Brady declared. (Trial 94).
Twelve men were chosen to hear the case: two farmers; two merchants; a shoemaker, a tinsmith, four
grocers, a coach maker and a cabinet maker. (Trial 15). It wasn’t until the fourth day of the trial that
defense counsel revealed their strategy. (Brandt 169). Not only would they claim insanity at the time of
the killing, but they would argue, as Sickles had on the street, that the defendant had the right to avenge
an adulterer.
Brady examined most of the witnesses. Stanton sat at Sickles’ side throughout the trial and handled
most of the legal objections and arguments. (Brandt 170; Fontaine, Apr. 16, 1859; Keneally 154).
Brady provided the polite charm of the seasoned courtroom lawyer that he was. Stanton was the
“sledge hammer” -- “hard bitten” and “sour-faced.” (Fontaine, Apr. 16, 1859; Keneally 160-61).
George Woolridge testified at length about the events of the weekend leading up to the killing. Those
on Lafayette Square who witnessed the shooting and those who arrived shortly thereafter and observed
Sickles’ behavior were called to the stand, as were those who saw Sickles at his home after the event.
Bridget Duffy recounted her master’s behavior on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. There was no
medical testimony about mental disease and no expert opinions rendered about Sickles’ responsibility
for his actions at the time of the crime.
Testimony of the witnesses was often interrupted by lengthy legal arguments. Brady and Stanton
attempted to show Sickles’ frenzied state of mind by introducing his wife’s “confession” educed the
night before the killing. Judge Crawford excluded it on the grounds of marital privilege. (Fontaine, Apr.
23, 1859). The most vociferous arguments were about the insanity defense. The prosecution argued
that every adult is presumed to be of sound mind and that the burden of proving otherwise rests with
the defendant. The defense argued that Sickles’ mind was impaired when he killed Key to the extent
that he could not control himself and that the law does not require that insanity exist for any definite
period of time – only that it existed at the time the killing occurred. (United States v. Sickles, 2 Hay. and
Haz. Cir. Ct. Reports 319, 322-23 [Apr. 20, 1859]).
In his summation on the 19th day of the trial, Brady dramatized the state of his client’s mind at the time
of the killing. He felt betrayed, the defense counsel declared:
All of the emotions of his nature changed into a single impulse; every throb of
his heart brought distinctly before him the great sense of his injuries; every
drop of his blood carried with it a sense of his shame; an indistinguishable
agony about the loss of his wife – an appreciation of the dishonor to come
upon his child – a realization that the promise of his youth must be forever
destroyed – that the future which opened to him so full in brilliancy had been
shrouded perhaps in eternal gloom by one who, instead of drawing the curtain
over it, should be invoked from the good God his greatest effulgence in the path
of his friend. (Trial 97-98).
By waving his handkerchief to signal Mrs. Sickles, Key was, in Sickles’ mind, “engaged within the
meaning of the law in the act of adultery,” Brady maintained. “If that not be taking a man in the act of
adultery, I would like the learned counsel for the prosecution to tell me what it was.” (Trial 98).
This conflated the two defenses of insanity and justification, and that confusion, more than likely, is
what Sickles’ lawyers were trying to accomplish. Stanton made the primary argument with regard to
justification, casting Mrs. Sickles as a victim, as well as her husband. (Trial 90). “The consent of the wife
cannot in any degree affect the question of the adulterer’s guilt, and if he be slain in the act of the
husband, then it is justifiable homicide,” Stanton insisted. (Trial 92). There are three instances, he told
the jury in summation, in which a defendant accused of homicide is justified in killing: in defense of his
household; in defense of himself, and in “upholding family chastity and the sanctity of the marriage
bed.” (Trial 90). Key “took advantage” of Sickles’ friendship and “debauched his house, violated the
bed of his host, and dishonored his family,” Stanton argued. “No man could enjoy any happiness or
pursue any vocation if he could not enjoy his wife free from the assaults of the adulterer.” (Ibid.).
To find otherwise would lead to prostitution and death, Stanton declared extravagantly. An adulterer’s
“lawless love” would soon be “supplanted by the object of some fresher history, and then the wretched
victim is sure to be soon cast off into common prostitution, and swept through a miserable life and a
horrible death to the gates of hell, unless a husband’s arm shall save her.” (Trial 91). The audience
applauded at Stanton’s conclusion. (Trial 92).
This was not exactly the law as Judge Crawford charged, however. If the slaying took place, the judge
instructed the jury, during:
actual (existing at the moment) adulterous intercourse with the wife of
the prisoner, the slaying of the deceased would be manslaughter; and
by existing adultery I do not mean that a prisoner stood by and
witnessed the act of adultery progressing, for it is easy to suppose the
actual fact to be established simultaneously with the killing by other
evidence, in perfect consistence with the law; if, for instance, the
husband saw the adulterer leave the bed of the wife, or shot him while
trying to escape from the chamber. If, however, a day or half a day
intervened between the conviction of the husband of the guilt of his
wife and the deceased, and after the lapse of such time the husband
take the life of the deceased, the law considers that it was done
deliberately, and declares that it is murder. (United States v. Sickles, at
325).
Of course, Daniel Sickles had witnessed nothing more than a signal to his wife from Key. And, even if
that could be construed as “catching them in the act,” the appropriate verdict would be manslaughter,
not acquittal.
As to the insanity defense, Judge Crawford accepted the defense position: “The law does not require
that the insanity, which absorbs from crime should exist for any definite period, but only that it exists at
the moment when the act occurred, with which the accused stands charged.” (United States v. Sickles,
at 326). And the jury must be convinced as a matter of fact beyond a reasonable doubt that the
defendant was sane at the time of the crime, the judge ruled:
Everybody is presumed to be sane who is charged with a crime, but when
evidence is adduced that a prisoner is insane, and conflicting testimony
makes a question for the jury, they are to decide it like any other matter of
fact; and if they should say or conclude that there is uncertainty, that they
cannot determine whether the defendant was or is not so insane, as to
protect him, how can they render a verdict that a sane man perpetrated the
crime and that no other can? (Sickles, ibid. at 327).
The jurors deliberated for 70 minutes. After 20 days of testimony and legal arguments, including
Saturdays, they declared Sickles not guilty on April 26, 1859. (Trial 106; Brandt 164). The audience
went wild, and Judge Crawford could not restore order. Even the lawyers were out of control: Stanton
danced a jig and shouted to the judge that Sickles should be released. (Brandt 184). Crawford granted
the motion, and Sickles was a free man. (Trial 106). His reputation untarnished by the scandal, Sickles
went on to become a general in the Civil War, in which he lost a leg, and, after the war, military
governor of South Carolina. (Keneally 317).
Commentators have since claimed that the concept of “temporary” insanity had never before been
raised in an American courtroom. (Brandt 171; Paine 34; Hessler 14; Langguth 163-64). Reporters at
the time declared that it had set a precedent. (New York Tribune, Apr. 28, 1859; New York Herald, Apr.
27, 1859; New York Times, Apr. 28, 1859; Keneally 199). It is more likely that the case is an example of
extra-legal, jury nullification. Although not justified by the law as the judge charged it, the jury may
have accepted Sickles’ right to avenge Key’s adultery. As one commentator put it at the time:
…[W]hatever the law was, and whatever judges might instruct, no American
jury would find a man guilty of murder for slaying the seducer of his wife or
daughter. The verdict in the Sickles case is simply another manifestation of
a sentiment whose existence many previous verdicts have proved. (Fontaine,
May 7, 1859).
The insanity defense in the Sickles case was only a pretense, “irreconcilable with the facts.” (Ibid.).
There was, of course, no medical testimony whatsoever to indicate that Sickles was mentally ill at the
time of the crime or had ever been treated for mental illness. There was contradictory testimony about
his state of mind on the day of the crime, but none of it suggested a malady or behavior much more
serious than what might be expected of a man who had just learned that his wife and his friend had
cheated on him and who had confronted and shot someone in a fit of passion on a public street.
As notable as the Sickles case was at the time, it was probably an infamous later case that defined the
role of the insanity defense in American law. The assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881
overshadowed the Sickles scandal when Charles Julius Guiteau pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
(Rosenberg). Today, of course, it is an accepted principle that the question of insanity relates to the
defendant’s state of mind at the time of the crime. (Meyer and Weaver 114, 117). Yet it is rarely raised
as a defense because, if it is accepted at all, it’s unlikely that defendants will be found sane after the trial
and given their freedom. More common is that they will be committed to mental institutions as a
danger to themselves or others – often for life. (Sales and Shuman 342). Particularly in notorious cases
–which murder prosecutions often are – judges are loath to release killers into the community.2 And
psychiatrists are often reluctant to declare them no longer a danger, a standard which has no meaning
in medicine and no reliable diagnosis.
This burden seems practically impossible to meet since it involves proving the
negative – that an NGI will not be dangerous. It is especially onerous when the
NGI is kept in strict custody and allowed no opportunity to demonstrate what
his behavior would be if he were given his liberty, increasing the likelihood that
judges will continue confinement even in the face of unanimous psychiatric
testimony that the patient should be released. (German and Singer 1064-65).
Even when partial-release is successful, unconditional release may be controversial and is unlikely to be
granted. Consider the case of John W. Hinckley, Jr., who was found not guilty by reason of insanity of
the attempted assassination of President Ronald W. Reagan in 1981. Hinckley was confined to St.
Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., after his trial. In the late 1990s, he was permitted occasional
release to his family. Over time, the number and duration of his furloughs were expanded. In 2013,
Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court in Washington declared that Hinckley was no longer a
22
A 1972 New York case presents a good example. Bruce Arnold Sherman was accused of murdering his wife and,
on the same day, firing a rifle at the home of his parents but was acquitted by reason of insanity. Less than three
months later, a Rochester State Hospital special-release committee recommended that he be released. Three
doctors found that he was not mentally ill or in need of care. The trial judge, who had heard uncontroverted
testimony of Sherman’s insanity at the trial, was now faced with ascertaining whether he was dangerous to himself
or others. Solely on the assumption that Sherman had taken the life of his wife and threatened those of his
parents, the judge found him dangerous and ordered his continued confinement. “In attempting to predict what
someone will do, it is reasonable to be guided by what he has done,” Judge David O. Boehm declared. (In the
Matter of Miller [Sherman], 53 Misc2d at 703 [Monroe Co. Ct.]). In reviewing the decision, an appellate court
noted the conundrum judges face: “One considering the question at bar must not only have the wisdom of a
Solomon and an Aesculapius, but also the insight of a talented clairvoyant. Any decision will be fraught with the
possibility of grave error. In balancing the interests one runs the risk of preventively detaining a completely sane
person or releasing one who by psychiatric judgment is sane but whose prior history contains several incidents of
assault of persons and property, and such acts of violence as attempted suicide, shooting at the residence of his
th
mother and father and the killing of his wife.” (46 A.D.2d at 179 [4 Dept 1974]).
danger to himself or others and allowed him to spend 17 days a month with his mother in Williamsburg,
Virginia, on the condition that he comply with 29 court-ordered restrictions on his behavior and
movements. Thirty-four years after his institutionalization, in 2015, psychiatrists testified that the
psychosis and depression that caused Hinckley to attempt the President’s life had been in remission for
more than 20 years. Hinckley’s lawyers argued that he had dutifully complied with all conditions of his
provisional release, including that he limit access to the internet and stay away from the President and
members of Congress, and they petitioned the judge to release him full-time. But, despite the fact that
he was no longer considered to be mentally ill or a danger to himself or others, the prosecutor’s office
opposed his release. (Hsu, Apr. 22, 2015). As of June 2015, lawyers were still arguing over conditions of
his release in a proposed court order, including whether his cellphone could be tracked by D.C.
authorities at any time because he had no expectation of privacy. (Hsu, June 17, 2015).
Before the Sickles case, it would have been unthinkable that an insane killer would ever be restored to
mental health. With modern pharmaceuticals and psychiatric therapy, it may now be less so. But the
prediction, politics and process of determining when someone is no longer mentally ill or a danger is
fraught with inconsistencies and difficulties.
Probably no branch of the criminal law has been the subject of so much
criticism and controversy as the defense of insanity. It is charged that the
rules of law governing insanity as a defense to crime are vague and confused;
that in so far as these rules are clear, they are clearly unsound in that they are
based on notions of mental disorder discredited by modern science; and
that the procedural machinery for trying cases where the defense is
raised is inefficient and blundering in the results. (Weihofen 1).
This criticism is as valid today as it was when written 60 years ago.
Works Cited
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Weekly (Mar. 12-May 14, 1859)
German, June Resnick and Anne C. Singer: “Punishing the Not Guilty: Hospitalization of Persons
Acquitted By Reason of Insanity,” 29 Rutgers Law Review 1016
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Hessler, James A.: Sickles at Gettysburg (Savas Beattie 2010)
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__________: “Government Conditions Hinckley Release on ‘No Expectation of Privacy’,” The
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1974)
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(Serpentine Publishing Co. 2002)
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