After a seventy minute deliberation, the jury in Daniel Sickles' murder trial announced their verdict of "not guilty" to cheers in the courtroom. 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. After a twenty-day trial, the popular Sickles was acquitted in what was seen as the first temporary insanity defense 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), 106.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Lawmaking/Litigating
Relevance
Personal
