Presidents and the Courts: The Trial of Charles Guiteau
Charles Guiteau was arrested for shooting President James A. Garfield on July 2, 1881. He was apprehended immediately after shooting the President. Garfield was operating under the delusion that he was deserving of a federal appointment as Consul General to Paris because of a speech he had given supporting Garfield for President. For weeks he had pestered a number of people including Secretary of State James G. Blaine, and when he did not get an appointment, he became upset and was determined to get even by killing the President.
On July 2nd Guiteau arrived at the station about 8:30 a.m. Garfield had arrived at the nearly empty station at 8:25 with Secretary Blaine. Secretary of War Robert Lincoln and two of Garfield's sons were also present. They had walked into a waiting room when Guiteau fired his first shot. It grazed Garfield's arm. Guiteau fired a second shot. The bullet entered Garfield's back just above the waist. He fell and Guiteau told onlookers: "It is all right, it is all right." A police officer on duty grabbed Guiteau and arrested him. A city health officer was the first doctor on the scene and he attended on the President. A police ambulance arrived and transported the president to the White House and up to his bedroom.
Following his arrest, Guiteau displayed strange behavior. When he was arrested he announced that he was "a Stalwart of the Stalwarts" (the Republican political faction led by Senator Roscoe Conkling) and he was pleased that Vice-President Chester Alan Arthur would now be president. This briefly led to suspicion that Arthur was involved in the deed, which was quickly proven false. On the way to city jail with a police detective, Guiteau asked the officer if he was a Stalwart. When the detective replied that he was, Guiteau promised to make him chief of police. In jail, he complained about having to remove his shoes, and when a photographer snapped his photo he demanded a royalty payment of $25.
Doctors initially assessed Garfield's chances for survival as poor, but after he survived the first forty-eight hours, they became more optimistic. His condition remained critical and on September 19, at 10:35 P.M. the president died. An autopsy identified the cause of death as a rupturing of an aneurysm in the splenic artery.
In the weeks following Garfield's shooting, Guiteau seemed to enjoy his celebrity status. He wrote a letter to "the Chicago Press" announcing his intention to write and publish and autobiography entitled "The Life and Theology of Charles Guiteau." He said that after he made bail, his plans were to head out on the lecture circuit to speak on matters ranging from religion and politics. He expected the fees for his lectures to pay for the first-rate lawyers that would surely win his acquittal. But as the summer progressed and he was not released, Guiteau became more agitated. He was upset with prison officials for denying him access to newspapers and keeping him in near isolation. When he was told in September that the president had died, Guiteau fell to his knees.
The day after Garfield died, he penned a letter to President Arthur in which he said that he presumed that Arthur appreciated what he had done."It raises you from $8,000 to $50,000 a year" and from "a political cypher to President of the United States with all its powers and honors." In the letter he called Garfield "a good man but a weak politician." Guiteau was pleased when the autobiography he had written in prison was published in the New York Herald. It included his personal note that he was "looking for a wife" and his hope that applicants for the job might include "an elegant Christian lady of wealth, under thirty, belonging to a first-class family."
Concern about a lynch mob for Guiteau led officials to move him to a brick cell with only a small opening at the top of the door. On September 11, 1881, a prison guard named William Mason fired a shot at Guiteau, but missed. The public responded with donations to Mason and his family. (Mason was court-martialed and received an eight-year jail term.)
George Corkhill, the district attorney for Washington, assumed that Guiteau was likely to raise an insanity defense. Corkhill told the press "He's no more insane than I am." Corkhill called Guiteau a "deadbeat" who "wanted excitement and now he's got it."
On October 8, Guiteau was formally charged with the murder of Garfield and six days later he was arraigned. George Scoville, Guiteau's brother-in-law, appeared and asked the court for a continuance to gather witnesses for the defense. He told Judge Walter Cox that the defense intended to make two primary arguments: (1) that Guiteau was legally insane and (2) that the president's death resulted from medical malpractice, not Guiteau's shooting. Judge Cox granted the defense motion and set the trial for November.
Guiteau felt that he should head his own defense. He did not want an insanity defence raised and told Scoville "If you waste time on such things, you will never clear me." Instead, Guiteau wanted Scoville to argue that he was legally insane only because the Lord had temporarily removed his free will and assigned him the task he could not refuse. Guiteau also proposed to argue that the court in Washington lacked jurisdiction to try him for murder because Garfield died in New Jersey.
Both the prosecution and defense began looking for medical witnesses to address the issue of the assassin's mental state. Corkhill foundd Dr. John Gray, the superintendent of New York's Utica Asylum, as the prosecution's chief witness on insanity issues. After interviewing Guiteau, Gray wrote an opinion to Corkhill that Guiteau acted out of "wounded vanity and disappointment," not insanity.
In 1881 was no easy task, the test for insanity fell under a legal precedent known as the M'Naghten rule, which required the government only to prove that Guiteau understood the consequences and the unlawfulness of his conduct. Since Guiteau knew that it was illegal to shoot the president and he knew that if he pulled out his revolver and shot the president, that the president might die, his chances for acquittal on this ground were not good. The prosecution could show that Guiteau did not act impulsively, but had planned the assassination and waited for a good opportunity.
The trial began on November 14, 1881 in a packed courtroom in Washington's old criminal court building. Guiteau was dressed in a black suit and white shirt. Jury selection proved difficult. Many potential jurors claimed that their opinions as to Guiteau's guilt were fixed. One prospective juror said "he ought to be hung or burnt. I don't think there is any evidence in the United States to convince me any other way." Jury selection took three days, and the questioning of 175 potential jurors, before finally settling on a jury of twelve men. The jury incuded an African-American man, something Guiteau did not like.
When the prosecution was about to begin its case, Guiteau jumped up and said that he was not very happy about his team of "blunderbuss lawyers" and said that he planned to handle much of the defense himself. He told the court: "I came in here in the capacity as an agent of the Deity in this matter, and I am going to assert my right in this case." The prosecution first called evidence about the circumstances of Garfield's assassination. Witnesses included Secretary of State Blaine, Patrick Kearney (the arresting officer), and Dr. D. W. Bliss, who performed the autopsy. Letters written by Garfield shortly before the assassination were introduced as exhibits, as were several of the vertebrae shattered by Guiteau's bullet. The most important testimony came from Dr. Bliss. Bliss used Garfield's actual spine to show how the shot fired by Guiteau directly caused the President's death.
As Guiteau was driven away from the courtroom after Bliss's testimony, a horse pulled alongside his van and the horse's drunk rider fired a pistol through the bars of the van. The bullet struck Guiteau's coat, but did not strike Guiteau.
In his opening statement for the defense, George Scoville called on the jurors' sympathy, stating that as society has gained more knowledge of insanity, it has come to recognize that persons so afflicted deserve sympathy and treatment, not punishment. He argued that the jury should try to determine, based on expert testimony, whether Guiteau's actions were the product of a deranged mind. Guiteau hampered his lawyer's efforts with unsolicited interjections. When Scoville was trying to convince the jury of Guiteau's insanity, Guiteau rose to his feet and saidd, "I had brains enough but I had theology on my mind." According to newspaper accounts, Guiteau was "foaming at the mouth" at times as he shouted his objections
to Scoville's characterizations of him.s odd legal practice.
Defense witnesses painted the picture of a strange and disturbed man. A physician summoned to Guiteau's home after he threatened his wife was an axe testified that he believed the accused was insane and should be committed. He concluded Guiteau had been captured by "an intense pseudo-religious feeling." A Chicago attorney who visited Guiteau in prison shortly after the assassination told how Guiteau had claimed that the shooting of Garfield was the Lord's work and he merely carried it out. Other witnesses described the strange behavior of Guiteau's father to support the notion that the defendant's insanity might be a hereditary condition.
Charles Guiteau took the stand on November 28. Responding to his attorney's questions impatiently, Guiteau told the jurors the story of his life. He described in great detail his political activities and inclinations during the spring of 1881, finally turning to the prayerful period of June when he awaited word from God about whether his inspiration to kill Garfield was divine. He used some of his own narrow escapes from death (a ship collision at sea, a jump from a speeding train, three attempted shootings) as evidence that God had an important plan for him. He said that he had performed a valuable service in killing Garfield, telling the jury "Some of these days instead of saying 'Guiteau the assassin', they will say 'Guiteau the patriot'."
On cross-examination, prosecutor John K. Porter tried to suggest that what the defense claimed was evidence of insanity was instead only evidence of sin. He got Guiteau to admit that he thought the assassination would increase sales of his autobiography. When Porter asked if Guiteau was familiar with the Biblical commandment, "Thou shalt not kill", Guiteau responded that in this case "the divine authority overcame the written law." Guiteau also said "I am a man of destiny as much as the Savior, or Paul, or Martin Luther."
The chief defense evidence came from medical experts. Dr. James Kienarn, a Chicago neurologist, testified that a man could be insane without suffering from delusions or hallucinations. He offered his expert opinion that the defendant was insane. But Kiernan's credibility was badly damaged in cross-examination when he guessed one out of every five adults was, or would become insane. Seven additional medical experts for the defense followed Kiernan to the stand.
New York neurologist Dr. Edward C. Spitzka said that it was "as plain as day that Guiteau is not only now insane, but that he was never anything else." The doctor drew his conclusions as much from his looks (including his lopsided smile) as his statements, concluding that the defendant had "the insane manner" he had so often observed in asylums. He added, based on his interview with the prisoner, that Guiteau was a "morbid egotist" who misinterpreted and overly personalized the real events of life. He thought this was the result of "a congenital malformation of the brain." Spitzka's credibility took a severe hit when, on cross-examination, prosecutor Walter Davidge forced Spitzka to admit that his training was as a veterinary surgeon, not a neurologist. Spitzka said sarcastically: "In the sense that I treat asses who ask me stupid questions, I am."
The prosecution called its own medical experts in rebuttal. Dr. Fordyce Barker testified that "there was no such disease in science as hereditary insanity" and that irresistible impulses were not a manifestation of insanity, but rather "a vice." Prison physician Dr. Noble Young testified that Guiteau was "perfectly sane" and "as bright and intelligent a man as you will ever see in a summer's day." Psychiatrist (called an "alienist" at the time) Allen Hamilton told jurors that the defendant was "sane, though eccentric" and "knew the difference between right and wrong." Dr. John Gray, superintendent of New York's Utica Asylum and editor of the American Journal of Insanity, took the stand as the prosecution's final witness. Gray, who had spent two full days of interviews with Guiteau, testified that the defendant was seriously "depraved," but not insane. Insanity, he said, is a disease typically associated with cerebral lesions, in his opinion. Guiteau displayed far too much rationality and planning to be truly insane, Gray concluded.
Closing arguments began on January 12, 1882. Prosecutor Davidge emphasized the legal test for insanity, which he claimed Guiteau failed to meet. He argued that Guiteau knew that it was wrong to shoot the President, and yet he did. Davidge told the jury that to conclude that Guiteau was insane would be "tantamount to inviting every crack-brained, ill-balanced man, with or without a motive, to resort to the knife or to the pistol."
For the defense, Charles Reed argued that common sense alone should persuade jurors of Guiteau's insanity. He told jurors that if it were up to Christ, he would heal and not punish such an obviously disturbed man as his client. Scoville, in a closing argument that lasted five days, suggested that Guiteau's writings could not be the product of a sane mind and that the defendant was owed the benefit of doubt.
Guiteau wanted to offer his own closing. Judge Cox denied his request. Disappointed, Guiteau said that the judge had denied the jurors "an oration like Cicero's" that would have gone "thundering down the ages." When the prosecution fearing adding a possible ground of appeal to the record, Judge Cox reversed his decision. Guiteau's bizarre address which included the singing of "John Brown's Body" and featured comparison's between his own life as "a patriot" and other patriots such as George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant. He insisted that the shooting of Garfield was divinely inspired and that "the Deity allowed the doctors to finish my work gradually, because He wanted to prepare the people for the change." He warned the jury that if they convicted him, "the nation will pay for it as sure as you are alive."
The jury deliberated for only an hour. In a candlelit courtroom, jury foreman John P. Hamlin announced the verdict: "Guilty as indicted, sir." The room filled with applause. Guiteau remained silent.
Judge Cox sentenced Guiteau "to be hanged by the neck until you are dead" on June 30, 1882. Guiteau shouted back at the judge, "I had rather stand where I am that where the jury does or where your Honor does."
As Guiteau's appeals were rejected, he still held out the hope that President Arthur would grant him a pardon. Arthur listened to arguments by defense experts for twenty minutes on June 22, 1882. Five days later, the President granted an interview with another defense partisan, John Wilson. Guiteau wrote a letter to Arthur asking that he at least stay the execution until the following January so that his case might "be heard by the Supreme Court in full bench." On June 24, President Arthur announced that he would not intervene. Hearing the news, an angry Guiteau shouted, "Arthur has sealed his own doom and the doom of this nation."
Guiteau announced his plan to appear for his hanging dressed only in underwear so as to remind spectators of Christ's execution, but he abandoned this plan after being persuaded that the immodest garb might be seen as further evidence of his insanity. In the prison courtyard on June 30, 1882, the day of his execution, Guiteau read fourteen verses of Matthew and a poem of his own that ended with the words, "Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah! I am with the Lord!" He was then hanged. Outside the jail, a thousand spectators cheered the announcement of his death.
On July 2nd Guiteau arrived at the station about 8:30 a.m. Garfield had arrived at the nearly empty station at 8:25 with Secretary Blaine. Secretary of War Robert Lincoln and two of Garfield's sons were also present. They had walked into a waiting room when Guiteau fired his first shot. It grazed Garfield's arm. Guiteau fired a second shot. The bullet entered Garfield's back just above the waist. He fell and Guiteau told onlookers: "It is all right, it is all right." A police officer on duty grabbed Guiteau and arrested him. A city health officer was the first doctor on the scene and he attended on the President. A police ambulance arrived and transported the president to the White House and up to his bedroom.
Following his arrest, Guiteau displayed strange behavior. When he was arrested he announced that he was "a Stalwart of the Stalwarts" (the Republican political faction led by Senator Roscoe Conkling) and he was pleased that Vice-President Chester Alan Arthur would now be president. This briefly led to suspicion that Arthur was involved in the deed, which was quickly proven false. On the way to city jail with a police detective, Guiteau asked the officer if he was a Stalwart. When the detective replied that he was, Guiteau promised to make him chief of police. In jail, he complained about having to remove his shoes, and when a photographer snapped his photo he demanded a royalty payment of $25.
Doctors initially assessed Garfield's chances for survival as poor, but after he survived the first forty-eight hours, they became more optimistic. His condition remained critical and on September 19, at 10:35 P.M. the president died. An autopsy identified the cause of death as a rupturing of an aneurysm in the splenic artery.
In the weeks following Garfield's shooting, Guiteau seemed to enjoy his celebrity status. He wrote a letter to "the Chicago Press" announcing his intention to write and publish and autobiography entitled "The Life and Theology of Charles Guiteau." He said that after he made bail, his plans were to head out on the lecture circuit to speak on matters ranging from religion and politics. He expected the fees for his lectures to pay for the first-rate lawyers that would surely win his acquittal. But as the summer progressed and he was not released, Guiteau became more agitated. He was upset with prison officials for denying him access to newspapers and keeping him in near isolation. When he was told in September that the president had died, Guiteau fell to his knees.
The day after Garfield died, he penned a letter to President Arthur in which he said that he presumed that Arthur appreciated what he had done."It raises you from $8,000 to $50,000 a year" and from "a political cypher to President of the United States with all its powers and honors." In the letter he called Garfield "a good man but a weak politician." Guiteau was pleased when the autobiography he had written in prison was published in the New York Herald. It included his personal note that he was "looking for a wife" and his hope that applicants for the job might include "an elegant Christian lady of wealth, under thirty, belonging to a first-class family."
Concern about a lynch mob for Guiteau led officials to move him to a brick cell with only a small opening at the top of the door. On September 11, 1881, a prison guard named William Mason fired a shot at Guiteau, but missed. The public responded with donations to Mason and his family. (Mason was court-martialed and received an eight-year jail term.)
George Corkhill, the district attorney for Washington, assumed that Guiteau was likely to raise an insanity defense. Corkhill told the press "He's no more insane than I am." Corkhill called Guiteau a "deadbeat" who "wanted excitement and now he's got it."
On October 8, Guiteau was formally charged with the murder of Garfield and six days later he was arraigned. George Scoville, Guiteau's brother-in-law, appeared and asked the court for a continuance to gather witnesses for the defense. He told Judge Walter Cox that the defense intended to make two primary arguments: (1) that Guiteau was legally insane and (2) that the president's death resulted from medical malpractice, not Guiteau's shooting. Judge Cox granted the defense motion and set the trial for November.
Guiteau felt that he should head his own defense. He did not want an insanity defence raised and told Scoville "If you waste time on such things, you will never clear me." Instead, Guiteau wanted Scoville to argue that he was legally insane only because the Lord had temporarily removed his free will and assigned him the task he could not refuse. Guiteau also proposed to argue that the court in Washington lacked jurisdiction to try him for murder because Garfield died in New Jersey.
Both the prosecution and defense began looking for medical witnesses to address the issue of the assassin's mental state. Corkhill foundd Dr. John Gray, the superintendent of New York's Utica Asylum, as the prosecution's chief witness on insanity issues. After interviewing Guiteau, Gray wrote an opinion to Corkhill that Guiteau acted out of "wounded vanity and disappointment," not insanity.
In 1881 was no easy task, the test for insanity fell under a legal precedent known as the M'Naghten rule, which required the government only to prove that Guiteau understood the consequences and the unlawfulness of his conduct. Since Guiteau knew that it was illegal to shoot the president and he knew that if he pulled out his revolver and shot the president, that the president might die, his chances for acquittal on this ground were not good. The prosecution could show that Guiteau did not act impulsively, but had planned the assassination and waited for a good opportunity.
The trial began on November 14, 1881 in a packed courtroom in Washington's old criminal court building. Guiteau was dressed in a black suit and white shirt. Jury selection proved difficult. Many potential jurors claimed that their opinions as to Guiteau's guilt were fixed. One prospective juror said "he ought to be hung or burnt. I don't think there is any evidence in the United States to convince me any other way." Jury selection took three days, and the questioning of 175 potential jurors, before finally settling on a jury of twelve men. The jury incuded an African-American man, something Guiteau did not like.
When the prosecution was about to begin its case, Guiteau jumped up and said that he was not very happy about his team of "blunderbuss lawyers" and said that he planned to handle much of the defense himself. He told the court: "I came in here in the capacity as an agent of the Deity in this matter, and I am going to assert my right in this case." The prosecution first called evidence about the circumstances of Garfield's assassination. Witnesses included Secretary of State Blaine, Patrick Kearney (the arresting officer), and Dr. D. W. Bliss, who performed the autopsy. Letters written by Garfield shortly before the assassination were introduced as exhibits, as were several of the vertebrae shattered by Guiteau's bullet. The most important testimony came from Dr. Bliss. Bliss used Garfield's actual spine to show how the shot fired by Guiteau directly caused the President's death.
As Guiteau was driven away from the courtroom after Bliss's testimony, a horse pulled alongside his van and the horse's drunk rider fired a pistol through the bars of the van. The bullet struck Guiteau's coat, but did not strike Guiteau.
In his opening statement for the defense, George Scoville called on the jurors' sympathy, stating that as society has gained more knowledge of insanity, it has come to recognize that persons so afflicted deserve sympathy and treatment, not punishment. He argued that the jury should try to determine, based on expert testimony, whether Guiteau's actions were the product of a deranged mind. Guiteau hampered his lawyer's efforts with unsolicited interjections. When Scoville was trying to convince the jury of Guiteau's insanity, Guiteau rose to his feet and saidd, "I had brains enough but I had theology on my mind." According to newspaper accounts, Guiteau was "foaming at the mouth" at times as he shouted his objections
to Scoville's characterizations of him.s odd legal practice.
Defense witnesses painted the picture of a strange and disturbed man. A physician summoned to Guiteau's home after he threatened his wife was an axe testified that he believed the accused was insane and should be committed. He concluded Guiteau had been captured by "an intense pseudo-religious feeling." A Chicago attorney who visited Guiteau in prison shortly after the assassination told how Guiteau had claimed that the shooting of Garfield was the Lord's work and he merely carried it out. Other witnesses described the strange behavior of Guiteau's father to support the notion that the defendant's insanity might be a hereditary condition.
Charles Guiteau took the stand on November 28. Responding to his attorney's questions impatiently, Guiteau told the jurors the story of his life. He described in great detail his political activities and inclinations during the spring of 1881, finally turning to the prayerful period of June when he awaited word from God about whether his inspiration to kill Garfield was divine. He used some of his own narrow escapes from death (a ship collision at sea, a jump from a speeding train, three attempted shootings) as evidence that God had an important plan for him. He said that he had performed a valuable service in killing Garfield, telling the jury "Some of these days instead of saying 'Guiteau the assassin', they will say 'Guiteau the patriot'."
On cross-examination, prosecutor John K. Porter tried to suggest that what the defense claimed was evidence of insanity was instead only evidence of sin. He got Guiteau to admit that he thought the assassination would increase sales of his autobiography. When Porter asked if Guiteau was familiar with the Biblical commandment, "Thou shalt not kill", Guiteau responded that in this case "the divine authority overcame the written law." Guiteau also said "I am a man of destiny as much as the Savior, or Paul, or Martin Luther."
The chief defense evidence came from medical experts. Dr. James Kienarn, a Chicago neurologist, testified that a man could be insane without suffering from delusions or hallucinations. He offered his expert opinion that the defendant was insane. But Kiernan's credibility was badly damaged in cross-examination when he guessed one out of every five adults was, or would become insane. Seven additional medical experts for the defense followed Kiernan to the stand.
New York neurologist Dr. Edward C. Spitzka said that it was "as plain as day that Guiteau is not only now insane, but that he was never anything else." The doctor drew his conclusions as much from his looks (including his lopsided smile) as his statements, concluding that the defendant had "the insane manner" he had so often observed in asylums. He added, based on his interview with the prisoner, that Guiteau was a "morbid egotist" who misinterpreted and overly personalized the real events of life. He thought this was the result of "a congenital malformation of the brain." Spitzka's credibility took a severe hit when, on cross-examination, prosecutor Walter Davidge forced Spitzka to admit that his training was as a veterinary surgeon, not a neurologist. Spitzka said sarcastically: "In the sense that I treat asses who ask me stupid questions, I am."
The prosecution called its own medical experts in rebuttal. Dr. Fordyce Barker testified that "there was no such disease in science as hereditary insanity" and that irresistible impulses were not a manifestation of insanity, but rather "a vice." Prison physician Dr. Noble Young testified that Guiteau was "perfectly sane" and "as bright and intelligent a man as you will ever see in a summer's day." Psychiatrist (called an "alienist" at the time) Allen Hamilton told jurors that the defendant was "sane, though eccentric" and "knew the difference between right and wrong." Dr. John Gray, superintendent of New York's Utica Asylum and editor of the American Journal of Insanity, took the stand as the prosecution's final witness. Gray, who had spent two full days of interviews with Guiteau, testified that the defendant was seriously "depraved," but not insane. Insanity, he said, is a disease typically associated with cerebral lesions, in his opinion. Guiteau displayed far too much rationality and planning to be truly insane, Gray concluded.
Closing arguments began on January 12, 1882. Prosecutor Davidge emphasized the legal test for insanity, which he claimed Guiteau failed to meet. He argued that Guiteau knew that it was wrong to shoot the President, and yet he did. Davidge told the jury that to conclude that Guiteau was insane would be "tantamount to inviting every crack-brained, ill-balanced man, with or without a motive, to resort to the knife or to the pistol."
For the defense, Charles Reed argued that common sense alone should persuade jurors of Guiteau's insanity. He told jurors that if it were up to Christ, he would heal and not punish such an obviously disturbed man as his client. Scoville, in a closing argument that lasted five days, suggested that Guiteau's writings could not be the product of a sane mind and that the defendant was owed the benefit of doubt.
Guiteau wanted to offer his own closing. Judge Cox denied his request. Disappointed, Guiteau said that the judge had denied the jurors "an oration like Cicero's" that would have gone "thundering down the ages." When the prosecution fearing adding a possible ground of appeal to the record, Judge Cox reversed his decision. Guiteau's bizarre address which included the singing of "John Brown's Body" and featured comparison's between his own life as "a patriot" and other patriots such as George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant. He insisted that the shooting of Garfield was divinely inspired and that "the Deity allowed the doctors to finish my work gradually, because He wanted to prepare the people for the change." He warned the jury that if they convicted him, "the nation will pay for it as sure as you are alive."
The jury deliberated for only an hour. In a candlelit courtroom, jury foreman John P. Hamlin announced the verdict: "Guilty as indicted, sir." The room filled with applause. Guiteau remained silent.
Judge Cox sentenced Guiteau "to be hanged by the neck until you are dead" on June 30, 1882. Guiteau shouted back at the judge, "I had rather stand where I am that where the jury does or where your Honor does."
As Guiteau's appeals were rejected, he still held out the hope that President Arthur would grant him a pardon. Arthur listened to arguments by defense experts for twenty minutes on June 22, 1882. Five days later, the President granted an interview with another defense partisan, John Wilson. Guiteau wrote a letter to Arthur asking that he at least stay the execution until the following January so that his case might "be heard by the Supreme Court in full bench." On June 24, President Arthur announced that he would not intervene. Hearing the news, an angry Guiteau shouted, "Arthur has sealed his own doom and the doom of this nation."
Guiteau announced his plan to appear for his hanging dressed only in underwear so as to remind spectators of Christ's execution, but he abandoned this plan after being persuaded that the immodest garb might be seen as further evidence of his insanity. In the prison courtyard on June 30, 1882, the day of his execution, Guiteau read fourteen verses of Matthew and a poem of his own that ended with the words, "Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah! I am with the Lord!" He was then hanged. Outside the jail, a thousand spectators cheered the announcement of his death.