Guiteau and the Assassination of President Garfield

The jury reached a guilty verdict on 25 January 1882. Guiteau was sentenced to death by hanging. He tried to hire another lawyer - to no avail. He appealed his case, but the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his contentions. Shocked at that result, the convicted criminal wrote a letter to President Chester Arthur. A pardon was his only hope:

I am entitled to a full pardon; but I am willing to wait for the public to be educated up to my views and feelings in the matter.  In  the meantime I suffer in bonds as a patriot...I am willing to DIE for my inspiration, but it will make a terrible reckoning for you and this nation. I made you, and saved the American people great trouble. And the least you can do is let me go; but I appreciate your delicate position, and I am willing to stay here until January, if necessary. I am God's man in this matter. This is dead sure. (Rosenberg, page 233-34.)

Guiteau himself was dead on 30 June 1882. He went to the scaffold still proclaiming he did what the Almighty told him to do.

It is very likely that Guiteau was insane. His autopsy revealed pathological findings in his brain:

The signs were persuasive; brains with fewer and less distinctive pathological changes...were not infrequently found in those who had spent years in asylums. (Rosenberg, page 240.)

And Guiteau was right about one thing. If the doctors had left the President alone, Garfield would probably have survived the shooting. The bullet had lodged in a protective cyst, about four inches from Garfield's spine.

A man can live with such an injury.