New York Congressman Daniel Sickles shot and killed U.S. District Attorney Philip Barton Key on a Sunday morning near Lafayette Park in Washington D.C. following his wife's confession the previous day of her protracted adultery with Key. Sickles surrendered immediately and was held in prison awaiting indictment and trial. The Grand Jury in the capital indicted him for murder on this day and his trial was set to begin April 4, 1859. He would be acquitted in the first application of the idea of temporary insanity in U.S. history. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Felix G. Fontaine, Trial of the Hon. Daniel E. Sickles for the Shooting of Philip Barton Key, Esq., U.S. District Attorney of Washington, D.C., February 27, 1859 (New York: R.M. De Witt, 1859), 5.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Crime/Disasters
Relevance
Personal
