Charles Guiteau: Presidential Assassin, Was He Insane?, Chapter 8, Click2Biography

<body link="0000ff" alink="ff0000" vlink="000000" bgcolor=000033> <table width="100%" bgcolor=000033> <tr> <td align=center valign=top> <table width=90% bgcolor=ffffff> <tr> <td align=center valign=top> <tr> <td> <div align=center><p><b><font face="arial, helvetica" size=5 color=000000><b>CHARLES GUITEAU</p> <p><font size="4"><b>CHAPTER 8 - WAS HE INSANE?</b></font></p> </div>  <center> <table width="90%"> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top"> <div align="justify"> <p><font face="arial, helvetica" color="000000" size="3">The government’s last witness against Charles Guiteau was superintendent of the Utica Asylum, <a href="http://images.virtualology.com/ac/2/i/ency0287.jpg" target="_blank"><b>Dr. John Gray</b></a>. During the course of his long career, he had diagnosed and treated about 12,000 insane patients. He did not think Charles Guiteau was insane.</p> <p>People who are truly insane, explained Gray, believe they are sane but have some type of physical disease that manifests itself in insane behavior. That, claimed <a href="http://famousamericans.net/johnperduegray/" target="_blank"><b>Dr. Gray</b></a> was not the case with the killer of President Garfield:</p> <blockquote><font face="Times New Roman"><b><i>No man who has such a delusion and is insane, recognizes himself as anything but sane, or recognizes that delusion is anything but an evidence of his insanity.</b></i> (Trial, page 194.)</font></blockquote> <p align="justify"><font face="arial, helvetica">Listening to Gray’s testimony, the defendant blurted out:</p> <blockquote><font face="Times New Roman"><b><i>The idea that a man cannot be insane without he has got a diseased brain is all nonsense...There is not brainology in this case, but it is spiritology. Spirits get into a man and make him do this and that thing, and that is insanity.</b></i> (Trial, page 196.)</font></blockquote> <p align="justify"><font face="arial, helvetica">The defense expert, <a href="http://www.famousamericans.net/edwardcharlesspitzka/" target="_blank"><b>Dr. Edward C. Spitzka</b></a>, told the jury Guiteau was insane:</p> <blockquote><font face="Times New Roman"><b><i>I concluded that I had an insane man to deal with on sight, before I asked him any questions. He has got the insane manner as well marked as I have ever seen it in an asylum.</b></i></font></blockquote> <p align="justify"><font face="arial, helvetica">Scoville, for the defense, asked his expert the most important question of all:</p> <blockquote><font face="Times New Roman"><b><i>Q: Was he insane on the 2nd day of July last, at the time he shot the President?<br><br> A: I should say that the prisoner, whom I examined, had been in a more or less morbid state throughout his life, and that he was probably insane at the time you mentioned.</b></i> (Trial, page 157.)</font></blockquote> <p align="justify"><font face="arial, helvetica">"Probably insane" wasn’t good enough to save Charles Guiteau.</p><br> </div> <p align="center"><font size="2"><a href="charles_guiteau_ch7.htm">GO TO LAST CHAPTER</a>     <a href="charles_guiteau_ch1.htm">BACK TO FIRST CHAPTER  </a>   <a href="charles_guiteau_ch9.htm">GO TO NEXT CHAPTER</a></p><br> </td> </tr> </table>  </td> </tr> </table>  </td> </tr> </table> </body>