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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 the victim. Sickles surrendered immediately and went on trial this day for premeditated murder in the Washington court of Judge T. H. Crawford. His defense team included James T. Brady of New York and the future secretary of war Edwin Stanton. After a twenty-day trial that was a national sensation tainted with media involvement and a sympathetic jury, Sickles was acquitted in what was seen as the first application of the idea of temporary insanity in U.S. legal 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), 4-32.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Lawmaking/Litigating
Relevance
Personal
