Star Spangled Scandal

by Chris DeRose

  “You are here to decide whether the defender of the marriage bed is a murderer—whether he is to be put on the same footing with” Cain.

  “If between the act which has placed the defendant in his present condition” and the act of a common murderer “you can trace any similarity, it will be for you to institute and perfect the comparison. It is not in my power.”

  Graham dismissed the relevancy of all the evidence that had been presented. “It is perfectly immaterial how death was inflicted—whether by one or three shots, whether the man was killed standing up or lying down. The question is what was the influence of the provocation on the mind of the man who slew him? What was the mental condition of the defendant at the time he took the life of the deceased?

  “Our legal system does not reach every case. There are certain wrongs which are not punished, and therefore the only law in such events is that traced in the human bosom by the finger of God—the law of human nature and instinct. When the law does not protect us, we are thrown on our own instincts, and have the right to defend ourselves from wrong.

  “In this District you have provided no protection against adultery. The inevitable result is, that you are thrown upon the principle of self-defense to protect yourselves and your own. The law tells you . . . you may take the life of the burglar, but it still permits your house to [be] polluted by the tread of the adulterer.

  “If a man come into your house against your will and lie on your bed, that is a trespass, and you can put him out by force. And yet if he lies down by your wife, and takes from her that which cannot be restored, according to the hypothetic position of the prosecution, he is not entitled to any redress at all.

  “Frailty,” he said, “thy name is ‘woman.’ A man who obtains the affections of another man’s wife is as guilty as him who deflowers her by ravishment.”

  Adultery, he pointed out, had been an offense under English law since the thirteenth statute of Edward I. But under Maryland law, “adultery is not an offense.” Only four states—Massachusetts, Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—had made it a crime. With no recourse to criminal courts and civil remedies unsatisfying, this was an area that the law simply did not reach.

  By your verdict in this case, gentlemen of the jury, “you will strike terror into the heart of the adulterer” or “embolden him in his course.

  “It is a well settled legal principle, that every man’s house is his castle.” Even “the humblest hut is as much a fortress for the protection of a man’s family as a fortress for defensive purposes.

  “One of the aggravated features of this case was that Mr. Key entered the abode of Mr. Sickles as a friend. We will show that they stood almost as close as do those two human beings, the Siamese twins, who now stand connected by a link which renders them indissoluble. The hearts of these two men have beaten almost against each other.”

  When “Mr. Sickles invited Mr. Key into his house, and Mr. Key entered for the purpose of accomplishing the downfall of his wife, he was as much a trespasser as if he entered it without an invitation.

  “I submit” that “Philip Barton Key seduced the wife of Daniel E. Sickles” and “in a transport of frenzy,” Sickles “sent him to his long account.

  “I believe in the maxim, De mortuis nil nisi bonum.” [Speak not of the dead except to mention them favorably.] He returned to Shakespeare, quoting Marc Antony’s funeral oration of Julius Caesar: “ ‘the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’ I would leave him where he slumbers, but as he is a fact in the case, and his conduct is a fact in the case, it is necessary that it should be reviewed” by the living.

  “Had Mr. Sickles any worse foe on earth than Philip Barton Key? Had Key come to him and sunk his stiletto in his bosom, he would have been merciful to him. He wraps himself in the habiliments of friendship, and under that garb, supposing that he is masked, commits the most frightful, and at the same time the most sneaking of all crimes.

  “It is strange that though adultery is twice forbidden in the Decalogue, no human law has caught up and carried out the spirit of the divine law. What is the reason of that? Do you suppose that society means that adultery should go unpunished? No. It throws you on the law of your heart . . . go by them and you reflect the will of Heaven, and when you execute them you execute the judgment of Heaven.

  “Is not that enough to madden any man’s brain who thinks upon it?” The District Attorney prosecutes thieves and burglars yet refuses “to protect Daniel E. Sickles’s house against the greatest malefactor that walked the face of the earth, himself keeping the burglar out in order that the adulterer might pass in.

  “The question which I present to your mind is this: [when] a man receives provocation which excites in him an amount of frenzy which he cannot control,” is he “responsible for what he does under the influence of that frenzy? It is folly to punish a man for what he cannot help doing, if you concede that the transport is such that he cannot control it. You cannot make him criminally responsible for what he does under the influence of that transport.

  “We mean to say, not that Mr. Sickles labored under insanity in consequence of an established mental permanent disease, but that the condition of his mind at the time of the commission of the act in question was such as would render him legally unaccountable, as much so as if the state of his mind had been produced by a mental disease.

  “Under the old law, the doctrine of insanity was based on a narrow foundation.”

  Sickles “did not act in cold blood. If he did, he is more or less than human. He knew when he met with Mr. Key on the afternoon in question that Mr. Key was at his house to make an assignation with his wife. He knew that Mr. Key had hired a house but a few blocks from his own mansion where in the indulgence of his beastliness he polluted the body of his wife. He knew that Mr. Key, by the aid of a park, and a Club House, and an opera glass [binoculars], could at any distance from his castle easily tell whether it was safe for him to approach. This thing was well considered.

  “Mr. Key hired this house in a part of the city where he knew no witnesses could come against him.” From his place at the Club House, he could look through his opera glass “into the very center of Mr. Sickles’s family circle.”

  When he saw Key, Sickles was “laboring under such a state of frenzy as deprived him of accountability for his act.”

  Graham had spoken for nearly five hours with no signs of fatigue. The same could not be said for Judge Crawford, who now adjourned. Sickles listened to the whole effort with his head bowed in his hands.7

  The jurors were not permitted newspapers—only the Bible and some religious works. “It is said they may be seen any afternoon on the balcony of the National Hotel, gathered around one of their number who is reading the Bible aloud to them.”8

  William Stuart made light of the fact that the Herald never referred to Graham by name, calling him “counsel for the defense.” After their “personal difficulty on Broadway,” the Herald edited their reports “so as to prevent its readers from knowing that there is such a man as Mr. Graham in existence!”

  That night, a saddler in Madison, Indiana, decided to satisfy his curiosity regarding his wife. He told his family that he would leave that evening for Cincinnati. Instead, he returned home at 9:00 p.m., finding his neighbor in his bed. He shot him with a revolver, left the house, and turned himself in to police.9

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Queen Against Daniel M’Naghten

  Marcus Aurelius reigned over an empire of sixty-five million people from modern-day England to Egypt and from Tukey to Morocco. The emperor was the supreme judicial authority. Marcus saw justice as a core function of his office: he dramatically expanded the days for hearing appeals to 230. Parties could take all the time they needed to make their case. Marcus would devote the time necessary to resolve it justly.

  The Emperor was presented with a homicide committed by a mentally ill man. He responded: “If you have ascerta
ined that Aelius Priscus is so insane that he is permanently mad and thus he was incapable of reasoning when he killed his mother, and did not kill her with the pretense of being mad, you need not concern yourself with the question how he should be punished, as insanity itself is punishment enough.”1

  Marcus, writing in the second century AD, was well ahead of his time.

  On May 15, 1800, King George III entered his royal box at Drury Lane Theatre. He acknowledged the audience with a bow, ensuring the assassin’s bullet passed over, rather than through him. It was nothing personal: James Hadfield believed the death of George III would bring about the Second Coming of Christ.

  Hadfield would have been hanged in a week had he fired on an ordinary Crown subject. But an attack on the king was high treason, a charge that guaranteed him the use of two lawyers. They argued the “wild beast” test was inadequate, as Hadfield’s act had clearly proceeded from insanity, produced by a head wound in battle against the French. Hadfield was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but the case failed to establish a lasting English precedent.

  “I was driven to desperation by persecution . . . they follow me . . . they persecute me wherever I go, and have entirely destroyed my peace of mind.” So thought Daniel M’Naghten, a Scottish woodworker, who arrived at Number 10 Downing Street to kill Prime Minister Robert Peel, the leader of the grand conspiracy against him. Confusing Edward Drummond, his secretary, for the target, M’Naghten opened fire, hitting him in the back. Drummond believed he was fine and had the bullet removed.

  Five days later he was dead.

  M’Naghten was clearly mentally insane. The existing insanity defense, which would only work if the defendant were as a “wild beast,” was inadequate, the court decided. M’Naghten was clearly insane, though he went about his business as a sane person would. The judge was so convinced of M’Naghten’s insanity that he ordered him released. The public went into a panic, wondering if they were now at the mercy of insane murderers. The House of Lords responded by summoning the trial judges: what is the standard for a successful insanity plea? They answered: “(1) Did the defendant know what he was doing when he committed the crime? Or (2) Did the defendant understand that his actions were wrong?”

  The M’Naghton Test, as it came to be known, was quickly and widely adopted in the United States.2

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The Libertine Punished

  DAY SEVEN—Monday, April 11, 1859

  Graham resumed his opening argument. Key “was the prosecuting officer of this District,” Graham said, who “came into this court and hunted down . . . the mere worms that crawl upon the face of the earth, while the full grown man of crime, such as he himself was, was permitted to stalk through your community.” Teresa Sickles was a woman “young enough to be his daughter.” He did not seem to know or care that Sickles and Key were born a year apart.

  It is for you to say what must have been the frenzy of Mr. Sickles at the time he encountered Mr. Key, under the circumstances leading to his death.

  You are here at the seat of our federal government. You are overshadowed by the halo of the name of Washington. Let the recollection of that name inspire you with fitting and becoming thoughts. Be reluctant and loath to incorporate in your verdict a principle which, if it be the principle on which you act, will have a more demoralizing effect than any other principle that could be sustained or acted upon by an intelligent jury.

  Graham “resumed his seat amid suppressed indications of applause and was complimented by many of those who were within reach of him.”

  The court took a brief recess.

  The Tribune liked “the breadth and frankness of this opening. Mr. Key was an adulterer—therefore, he should have been killed. He had seduced Mrs. Sickles—therefore, Mr. Sickles did right in killing him.” The Daily Confederation of Montgomery, Alabama, thought it “the most brilliant and forcible forensic effort ever made in Washington.”1

  The Philadelphia Inquirer was less impressed. Observers would doubt they were watching “one of the most brilliant lights of the bar. His premises are partial and false, and his deductions, if admitted, would justify every jealous woman, or suspicious man, in committing murder in obedience to the dictates of their passions.”2

  The Post pointed to its contradictory nature: on one hand, “slaying an adulterer is a perfectly justifiable deed . . . right and praiseworthy.” On the other, “Sickles was so frenzied by the wrong he had received that he was no longer responsible for what he did. The inevitable conclusion would seem to be . . . that Sickles is only capable of doing right when he is out of his head.”3

  After the opening, Brady moved to place a series of letters into evidence. It was the correspondence between Sickles, Key, Jonah Hoover, Marshal Bacon, and Stephen Beekman. Ould objected that the letters were a year old and had no bearing on the case.

  Brady responded that Ould had told the jury that Sickles had no purpose other “than remorseless revenge.” As it stands, the jury knows nothing “as to their former personal relations. We do not propose offering the testimony to prove the adulterous act on the part of Mr. Key, but to show the friendly relations between the deceased and the accused.” This correspondence shows “that their relations were of a friendly character.”

  Nothing in the letters expressed “either a kindly or a hostile feeling,” Ould said.

  “The jury will determine that,” Brady said. “The letter commences ‘Dear Sir’ and ends with ‘respectfully and truly yours.’ ” The letters are also admissible to prove that Sickles believed his relationship with Key to be “of an innocent and honorable character.”

  Carlisle weighed in: “An assassination is no less an assassination because the deep motive or passion which led to it—whether it be gold, or ambition, or vengeance.”

  Phillips, the former Alabama congressman on the defense team, argued that proof of the friendship contradicts the claim of malice, a required element of murder. “This is but one link of the chain of circumstances to show the friendship which existed between the parties prior to the date of the tragedy, and which continued down to within a few days of the commission of the act.”

  Crawford was ready to rule. “The law undoubtedly is that when a man is on trial for murder, previous expressions of good will and acts of kindness toward the deceased may be proved.” These letters, however, are “simply courteous, and had no bearing on the issue. The letters are not evidence.”

  Brady called the first witness for the defense. William Badger was the agent of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. He had known Sickles since his return from London; and he had known Key for the same amount of time.

  “Do you know what the relations between Key and Sickles were in regard to friendship or association?” Brady asked.

  “Their relations were, as far as my knowledge extended, of the most intimate character.”

  “Did you know the wife of Mr. Sickles?”

  “I knew her very well indeed.”

  On February 10, Badger had been at a dinner party at Sickles’s house and had sat at the table with Sickles, Teresa, and Key.

  “What other persons were there as guests?”

  Carlisle objected.

  Brady wanted to show that the Pendletons, Key’s sister and brother-in-law, were also there.

  Carlisle thought this irrelevant and “those who had already suffered too much in this matter should not be unnecessarily brought into this inquiry.”

  Brady lamented the suffering of the Pendletons, but to leave them out would be a disservice to a man on trial for his life. The friendship between Key and Sickles was relevant to prove the effect on Sickles’ mind “when he learned of Mr. Key’s perfidy. He must have thought, as Julius Caesar thought as he fell at the foot of Pompey’s statue, exclaiming, as the blood dropped from the point of his friend’s poignard, ‘Et tu Brute!’ ”

  The judge sustained Carlisle’s objection. “Mr. Key’s being there is evidence to th
e jury of an act of kindness on the part of Mr. Sickles towards him. But I do not see, and cannot perceive, how the presence of his sister or his sister’s husband there can go to prove the same thing.”

  The next witness for the defense was Congressman John Haskin.

  “How would you characterize the relations between Mr. Key and Mr. Sickles, as to the degree of intimacy?”

  “Very much like the degree of intimacy existing between myself and Mr. Sickles,” Haskin said.

  “Did you visit frequently at the house of Mr. Sickles?”

  Yes; “My lady visited there, too.”

  “Did you meet Mr. Key there?”

  “I did.”

  “Was he frequently there?”

  “He was. I last saw him at the Opera, when Piccolomini performed.”

  In the days before Daniel Sickles opened the most popular show in town, Washington was “badly infected” with “Piccolomini fever.” The Tuscan noblewoman and worldwide opera star earned $4,000 a month, more than a member of Congress made in a year, and spurned marriage offers from royals throughout Europe. As the Evening Star put it, “She would rather be a great artist than the first lady in the land.”4

  Piccolomini arrived in the capital by way of Philadelphia, where a newspaper reported that she “much resembled that very charming and interesting young lady, Mrs. Daniel E. Sickles, of New York.” The reporter who wrote the article thought that such comparisons were a greater compliment to Piccolomini.

  On February 7, she performed as Norina in Don Pasquale. Sickles arrived late, detained by business in the House, and scanned the darkened theater for his wife. She was seated with Emanuel Hart and Mrs. Badger. He saw Key seated elsewhere. “A look of recognition passed between them. They bid each other the time of day.”