Murder trials, then and today

About a week ago, George Zimmerman spoke to Fox News in an interview regarding the Trayvon Martin shooting, where he expressed having no regrets.  When pressed further by interviewer Sean Hannity, he stated "I feel it was all God's plan."

Interestingly, I happen to be researching Charles Julius Guiteau at the moment.  Guiteau was the assassin who shot President Garfield and during his trial used the following defense: 

I thought the Deity and I had done it, sir. I want it distinctly understood that I did not do that act in my own personality. I unite myself with the Deity, and I want you gentlemen to so understand it. I never should have shot the President on my own personal account. I want that distinctly understood.  (Source).

Guiteau's defense tried to use the insanity plea (Guiteau himself claimed he was perfectly sane, but was insane when God told him to shoot the President; his lawyers did not make the distinction).  Nearly everyone at the time, including religious leaders, agreed that Guiteau had no divine inspiration for such a pointless act and the debate centered around whether he was either insane or a self-obsessed, evil assassin.  I have not seen the reactions to Zimmerman's statement, but I wonder if the number of people who believe him is comparatively higher or lower than those who believed Guiteau?  That could be a depressing statistic.

Charles Rosenberg, author of The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau, argued that had Guiteau shot any other man (or had he simply wounded the President), he would have been committed to an asylum and not executed.  I'm not 100% convinced that Zimmerman isn't slightly "out there" anyway, but I wonder if his defense will change if it begins to appear he can't get out of this one using the "Stand Your Ground" law?  I'm not really trying to compare the two trials other than to point out a similarity in statements, but at least you could say that in both cases they ended up being not as open-and-shut as you would think.  And as you guys are well aware I'm always looking for excuses to talk about history.

Anyway, here's some general interest facts/quotes I've found regarding Guiteau.  I'm of the opinion he was insane but still sane enough to know what he was doing.  There's some though who still think it was all an act or that he was completely sane if admittedly a little odd.

• Charles Guiteau: "It was transitory mania that I had; that is all the insanity that I claim."

• Guiteau, in response to why he bought the particular pistol he did:  "I do not claim that I was to do the specific act; but I claim that the Deity inspired me to remove the President, and I had to use my ordinary judgment as to ways and means to accomplish the Deity's will."  He later hinted that he believed the ivory-handled pistol he bought would look better in a museum one day.

• Guiteau: "The Deity uses certain men to serve Him. He is using this honorable court, and this jury, and all these policemen, and these troops to serve Him and to protect me."

• Guiteau, in response to whether he killed the President: "The doctors killed him; I did not kill him."

• Guiteau: "I presume the President was a Christian, and that he will be happier in Paradise than here."

• Mr. Porter [prosecution]: "Was one of your purposes in removing the President to create a demand for your book?"
• Guiteau:  "Yes, sir; with the modification that I have previously stated--to preach the gospel as set forth in the book."

• In his autobiography that he sent to the New York Herald while in prison awaiting trial, Guiteau added the footnote: "I am looking for a wife. I want an elegant Christian lady of wealth, under thirty, belonging to a first class family... I am fond of female society, and I judge the ladies are of me, and I should be delighted to find my mate."

• George M. Beard, neurologist for the defense, regarding Guiteau's mental state: "All the links of the chain are there, but they are not joined, but rather tossed about hither and thither, singly, like quoits."

• In response to Guiteau's self-written defense, one asylum superintendent described it as "...bearing the same relation to ordinary reasoning that the scenery and incidents of a nightmare bear to ordinary life."

• Before and after the assassination, Guiteau claimed that his ideas in a speech entitled "Garfield vs. Hancock" were what allowed the Republican Party to win the presidency.  During the trial, it was discovered that the speech was originally for Ulysses S. Grant, who was seeking a third term but had been defeated by Garfield in the Republican convention.  When Garfield got the nomination, Guiteau simply crossed out Grant's name and wrote Garfield's above it.  He only gave the speech once, to a handful of citizens in New York.

Sources:
The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau by Charles E. Rosenberg
Garfield by Allan Peskin

"Excerpts from the Trial Transcript: Cross-Examination of Charles Guiteau" at http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/guiteau/guiteautranscriptguiteaucrossx.html

Twisted History

A few months ago, Stanek messaged me with an interesting observation: it's curious to see all the nostalgia these days for a supposed "time before corporations" in American history when we consider that we are a country that was literally founded by one (that's not his argument verbatim, just my summation of it). I know almost nothing about economics so I won't comment on American corporate history here. However, I've always been one to keep an eye out for tidbits that fly in the face of the generic, vague, or flat-out false "facts" about U.S. history that get thrown around, especially those used for political arguments (what I call "twisted history"). It's not that I'm a buff for alternate history or that I go out of the way to find any facts I can that support my own opinion, but I do keep the door open while reading for when those facts do happen to show up. And at the very least if it turns out that I'm wrong then my own views on history will have been challenged for the better.

Thus, with all the generalized comments these days about returning to a time in American history when the government never told us what to do and that the states should be calling the shots, it made me laugh when I caught this brief mention in Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America of South Carolina telling its citizens what to do:

"...other strictures were added, including limitations on movement of slaves and penalties against white persons who traded with slaves. A recapitulation of these laws in the 1691 slave code forbade slaveowners from giving slaves Saturday mornings free, 'as hath been accustomed formerly.'" (page 68)

To me, there is something incredibly ironic about the government of South Carolina, of all places, not only attempting to force its citizens to do something (that is, be more cruel to their slaves) but also trying to control the free market. But to be fair, Berlin shows throughout the book that the north had its share of reprehensible laws regarding slavery and individual rights too. This passage in particular caught my eye:

"Often the punishment meted out to free blacks drove them back into bondage, as the Pennsylvania law enslaved free blacks found to be without regular employment, and who "loiter[ed] and misspen[t]" their time." (page 187)

Freed blacks being enslaved for not spending their time the way the state thinks they should... I understand the different mindset whites had back then towards African Americans but regardless, that is a pretty significant showing of just how intrusive state governments could be back then. Of course libertarians might argue that government at any level should stay out of our lives, whereas I would counter that that's likely one of the ways slavery got started in the first place.

Anyway, I don't really have an overall argument here. It is generally true that government was less intrusive in 18th and 19th centuries. The examples I pointed out were also from the colonial era, although to me it's a hard argument to say colonial governments were any more intrusive than early American state governments. Additionally, these laws are hundreds of years old and have little to do with the governments they are associated with today; if conservatives in South Carolina or Pennsylvania want little or no government interference today then that's their political ideology. I just like pointing out that governments at all times and in all places have had a tendency to try and tell people what to do, for better or for worse. In many instances in addition to the two that I listed, things weren't as hands off and "free to do as you please" in the previous centuries as certain people like to believe. Ironically, you would think that having a system of slavery would make that self-evident...