EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
ADDRESSES 
DELIVERED by * 
JOHN A. TAYLOR, 
IN 
THE CASES OF BURROUGHS AND FUCHS, 
WHO WERE INDICTED AND TRIED FOR MURDER AT OYER AND 
TERMINER OF THE SUPREME COURT HELD IN 
KINGS COUNTY, N. Y. 
NEW-YORK: 
S. S. PELOUBET & COMPANY, 
Law Booksellers and Publishers. 
1882. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, 
By JOHN A. TAYLOR, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. 
Early in the spring of 1882, we suggested to Mr. 
Taylor that, as the first edition of his Burroughs Ad- 
dress was out of print, a second edition should be pub- 
lished which should include the Fuchs Address and 
should be extended to a treatise on the general sub- 
ject of " Exonerative Insanity." Arrangements were 
thereupon perfected under which he began the prepara- 
tion of the work. When the treatise was about half 
finished, he was called by Mayor Low to the head of the 
Law Department of Brooklyn, and has since then been 
unable to complete the work. 
We have thought it best, therefore, to publish the 
two addresses, under the general title, in the expecta- 
tion that if another edition should be called for, it will 
be found practicable to present the book in its com- 
plete form. 
The Publishers. 
New York, July, 1882. THE BURROUGHS CASE. THE BURROUGHS CASE. 
[On the 13th of November, 1875, John Joseph Burroughs shot his 
wife, to whom he had been greatly attached, but who had refused to 
live with him. He was promptly apprehended, and on January 24th 
his trial began at the Oyer and Terminer for Kings County, New 
York; Mr. Justice Pratt presided. Hon. Abram H. Dailey was as- 
signed to defend him, and John A. Taylor was associated with him as 
junior counsel. The prosecution having rested their case, Mr. Taylor 
addressed the jury in the speech which follows, and which is a copy 
of the notes taken by Mr. Thomas E. Calvert, the stenographer. After 
one day's evidence for the defense had been taken, and at the open- 
ing of the court on the second day Mr. Winchester Britton, the Dis- 
trict Attorney, requested the court to advise the jury to find a verdict 
of acquittal on the ground of insanity. This request was acceded to 
by Mr. Justice Pratt, who used the following language: "Of 
course it is the duty of a prosecuting officer to examine and to satisfy 
himself that the defense has its foundation in truth. The defendant's 
counsel were fully satisfied, and it has been the feeling of the court 
from the commencement of the trial, from a close observation of the 
prisoner, that this was at least a doubtful case, even before the defense 
had put in evidence. But that was a matter the court could have left 
to the jury, unless the prosecuting officer was satisfied that the charge 
could not be sustained. The case has been carefully prepared on the 
part of the people, every witness that could possibly be procured has 
been examined by the District Attorney, and every suggestion offered 
that was strictly within the line of his office. It is not his duty to 
3 4 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
wring a conviction from a jury when he is satisfied that the prisoner 
cannot be fairly convicted, although it may be his duty to submit the 
case to the jury. The learned counsel for the defense have observed 
the greatest care in the preparation of their case. What you have 
seen in court is only a very small part of their labor, and all their 
labor they have given gratuitously. In accordance with their oath 
and a chivalric sense of honor, they threv/'aside business which would 
have been profitable to them, and cheerfully accepted the assignment 
of the court to defend this unfortunate man. That they have defend- 
ed him well and with great zeal, is apparent to all. The court deems 
it proper that you, gentlemen of the jury, should render a verdict in 
this form; that the prisoner is not guilty by reason of insanity ; that 
he was insane at the time of the killing, and that his insanity still 
continues." Burroughs was accordingly committed to the State 
Asylum at Utica, where he still remains (October, 1881), in a hopeless 
condition of dementia.]* 
ADDRESS. 
May it please the Court: Gentlemen of the Jury: 
I doubt very much whether any member of our 
profession ever rises to address a jury of his country- 
men upon a subject involving the issue of life and 
death, that he does not feel himself overwhelmed 
with the responsibilities which rest upon him. This 
is peculiarly the case, gentlemen, when the issue to be 
considered is one involving such delicate relations as 
those which it is our duty to examine. 
The prisoner at the bar is to receive at your hands 
nothing of interest to him: no verdict that you can 
pronounce, nothing which the learned judge can say, 
nothing which I shall be able to say, or those who 
* A letter received from Dr. John P. Gray, in charge of that asylum 
and one of the experts who examined Burroughs during his trial in 
behalf of the prosecution, dated October, 1881, says: "Mr. Burroughs 
is an insane man, and in my judgment a very improper man to be at 
large." BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
5 
shall follow me in his behalf, will fall upon his ear 
with any degree whatever of interest. Nothing but 
the fiat of Omnipotence itself can re-illuminate the 
deserted chambers of his brain, or re light the torch 
of reason which has fallen from its socket I The Dis- 
trict Attorney said in his opening, that the prisoner 
was nothing but a "drunken vagabond." Gentlemen, 
I know of no law, written or unwritten, which pre- 
scribes that you shall sit here giving the careful 
attention that you have given to this case, that the 
judge shall sit here and pass upon the evidence 
submitted to your consideration, all that a "drunken 
vagabond" may be hung. The question we are to 
deal with is a far different question from that. We 
are, as responsible men, responsible to our office, 
responsible to civilization, responsible to this prisoner, 
to say, whether on November 13 last, he was in 
that full possession of his faculties which made him 
criminally liable for his conduct on that occasion, 
whatever it was. I agree with the District Attorney, 
that this is not an abstract question. I agree with him 
that it is a question solely to be considered by you as 
a question of fact: a most difficult problem, a most 
delicate judgment to pronounce, but nevertheless one 
which you are called upon, in the exercise of your 
duties as citizens of the Republic, to determine upon 
your oaths between the people and this prisoner. 
It may possibly never have occurred to you that 
when a man commits an alleged crime, whether he 
be innocent, or whether he be guilty, the jury, who 
are called to pass upon the commission of that crime, 
are a* jury selected from the very people whose rights 6 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
he is supposed to have outraged, gathered from the 
great commonwealth whose laws he is charged with 
trampling under foot; and thus the prisoner, whether 
guilty or innocent, starts out with a selection from the 
very quarter that he has offended, presumably against 
him, yet sitting in judgment upon him. 
Now, we think, in behalf of this unfortunate 
prisoner, that one of two theories is true. Either this 
man, who has sat here already a full day and a half, 
gazing listlessly into vacancy, whose heart was not 
touched by the pathetic recital of the death of his own 
wife, made in his presence, which, I feel sure, thrilled 
your hearts as it did mine,-that either he is playing 
a part, acting a drama-an unlettered, unintelligent 
man, a man who cannot read or write-that he is 
acting a character with greater success than it has 
ever been simulated upon the stage, or else God has 
indeed touched the fountain of his brain and left it a 
desert. Gentlemen, I hope that I need not apologize 
to you, at the outset of this case, for introducing to 
your consideration a defense of this character. It is 
true that not very long ago, men were, by the rules 
of the law, to be found of a degree of intelligence no 
greater than that of the brutes, or else they were held 
sane (Justice Tracy, in King v. Arnold, 1723). It is 
equally true that it is not very long since the standard 
of sanity was held to be " whether a person could 
count twenty or not." But, gentlemen, we live in a 
different age from that. The jury system, wrung from 
the unwilling hands of King John, more than six hun- 
dred and fifty years ago, has stood the test of advancing 
civilization, and you who are called upon to determine 
this question, will consider it in the light of advanced BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
7 
science, will consider it as it shall be lighted up by the 
reflection of learned men engaged in that special line 
of investigation, and will pass upon it with the delib- 
erate, intelligent judgment which your experience 
and the experience of others, as it shall be brought to 
your attention, will enable you to give to it. 
Now, gentlemen, at the threshold of this case, I 
want to ask you to disburden your minds, if you may 
possibly entertain any such prejudice, of the idea that 
this is a trumped-up defense on the part of attorneys. 
I know not what conception you yourselves may en- 
tertain of the degree of conscience which lawyers may 
possess in the administration of their duties. I know 
not how little you may regard the oaths, which they 
have taken when they became members of the bar, to 
discharge their duties fearlessly, without favor, and 
with a conscious knowledge of the law, whose officers 
they are. But, for my own part, I sincerely beg you 
to believe that what I shall say to you here is said 
with the full and solemn consciousness of the oaths 
which I have taken; that I recognize no such absurd 
doctrine as that promulgated by Lord Brougham, the 
great English jurist, that a lawyer was obliged to do 
everything that was possible for his client, even if it 
overturned empires and sowed the seed of desolation 
broadcast through the land. I recognize a binding 
obligation to my client to do whatsoever I may for 
him, which does not conflict with that more sacred 
obligation which I owe to my conscience and my God. 
I shall never do that for him which I shall not do for 
myself, to wit: knowingly violate any of the laws of 
morality which I consider myself bound by. It is 
fair for you, then, to believe that the attitude which I 8 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
assume in this case is one thoroughly in consonance 
with my honest convictions of the facts. 
Now, we shall not proceed far in this important 
investigation before we shall discover that the ques- 
tion which we are called upon to decide is one which 
has never been passed upon by the courts. I mean 
by that simply this : that the district-attorney when 
he shall come to close this case will be wholly unable 
to cite to you any well-defined principle of law which 
shall govern it, going any further than to inform you, 
gentlemen, that after all the artificial rules laid down 
to determine the degree of reason which a man must 
possess in order to be criminally responsible, it rests 
with the jury in the particular case-the jury who have 
seen the man, the jury who have heard his history, the 
jury to whom experts, if they are offered, shall testify 
-to solely determine what their verdict is to be upon 
the facts. 
Why ! this doctrine of insanity as a defense is not 
a new doctrine. "That the madman's punishment 
is his own madness," was a maxim of the old Roman 
law long before our Anglo-Saxon civilization began. 
It lies at the root of every definition of murder which 
can be found in the books. It is comprised in that 
common law doctrine long ago established, that the 
intent of the party must lie as a part of the corpus 
delicti, and I shall, with your permission, and the 
permission of the court, call your attention briefly to 
a few authorities which I have collected, tending to 
show what murder has been considered to be, since it 
has been known as a crime among men. 
In the earliest times of English law, murder con- 
sisted in the secret killing of a man, and the only way BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
9 
they had of determining who was the responsible man, 
was to hold the Hundred in which it was committed to 
heavy fine for every murder there committed, and that 
fine was remitted from the Hundred when it was 
ascertained that the party killed was an Englishman. 
Well now, as early as that, there crops out this idea: 
the proof that a man was an Englishman remitted 
the fine, because it was presumed in those rude days 
that an Englishman would not murder an Englishman, 
and the moment it was established that the party 
killed was an Englishman, it was remitted, because no 
intent was found (4 Blackstone, 194). Hawkins defines 
murder to be "the willful killing of any one with 
malice aforethought (1 Hamkins'1 Pleas of the Crown, 
92)." Coke says, "murder is where a man of sound 
mind and discretion unlawfully killeth any reasonable 
creature" (3 Coke's Institutes, 47). Mansfield-that 
"murder is where a man of sound sense unlawfully 
killeth another of malice aforethought, either express 
or implied" (Rex r. Hazel). Francis Wharton, our 
authority on homicides, accepts Lord Coke's defini- 
tion. Bishop abandons the attempt, after undertaking 
a definition in two editions of his work, in the last, 
and says it is impossible to define the crime of murder. 
Now what is the obvious element of murder as 
observed so early in the history of our jurisprudence? 
It is this: That no man shall have been considered to 
have murdered a fellow-being unless, beside the act of 
killing, there shall exist in his mind a clearly-formed 
conception to kill; that murder was something more 
than the naked act; that there must stand behind it 
the responsible reason of a human being. Why, gen- 
tlemen, if I seize your arm, and by force of my 10 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
strength a knife which you hold plunges to the heart 
of your neighbor, are you to be tried and found 
guilty of murder ? If not, why ? Certainly not; 
because there existed-in your mind no willful intent 
whatever against that man; your reason was not 
aroused against him; there was nothing in you that 
was criminal, although your hand was bloody with 
the deed. That is the doctrine that was recog- 
nized so long ago, and Bishop says this was " the 
doctrine of the law superior to all other doctrines, 
because first in nature, from which the law itself pro- 
ceeds, that no man is to be punished as a criminal 
unless his intent be wrong." 
Now, for a long time in our American civilization, 
there was no statutory definition of murder. The 
definitions were abandoned, and they rested upon the 
case of the People v. Kirby, in 2 Parker's Criminal 
Cases, page 28, where it was held that "every 
willful taking of human life without a justifiable 
cause," was murder. That was. the common law ex- 
pressed upon that occasion in this case, and for a long 
time we remained without any statutory law upon 
that subject. In 1787 there were statutes passed in 
this State which prescribed that poisoning, stabbing, 
and other specific deeds mentioned, resulting in death, 
should be punished capitally. 
But a general definition was attempted in the 
Revised Statutes of 1830, which said, "killing a human 
being without the authority of law-when perpetrated 
with a premeditated design-was murder ;" the act of 
1860 said that when it was "perpetrated by any kind 
of willful, premeditated, a,nd deliberate killing it was 
murder ;" the act of 1862 said that when it was "per- BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
11 
petrated from any kind of premeditated design to 
effect the death, it was murder and finally, two 
years ago (1873), our legislature added to this the word 
"deliberate," and said that ''when perpetrated from 
a premeditated and deliberate design to effect the 
death of the person killed or of any other person, it 
was murder;" and that is the statute, gentlemen, 
under which you upon your oaths are to find this 
shooting to be murder, if it be so. Now, I have called 
your attention to these express statutory and common- 
law definitions of murder, in order to establish to your 
satisfaction-a work of useless repetition, perhaps, but 
which I felt it my duty to do-to establish to your 
satisfaction that the plea of insanity as a defense to 
criminals had its origin in the very gssence of murder 
itself, that it appears as a very important element of 
the corpus delicti itself, of the body of the crime 
itself, and that it is so far from being a new-fangled 
notion, a shrewd device of lawyers who stifle their 
consciences, a most essential ingredient of the import- 
ant system of jurisprudence under which we live, and 
by which society itself is protected. When our stat- 
ute-makers came to frame a law upon the subject of 
insanity, they did nothing more than to declare the 
common law itself. The common law had long- held 
that a man who was insane could never be held respon- 
sible for his deeds, and the statute did nothing more 
than to write it in our law books so that all people could 
read it, and that it might not be gainsaid. 
So, gentlemen, this defense which we introduce is 
one founded upon the elementary principles of the 
law-a right which every man possesses, a privilege 
which every being may claim who stands under the 12 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
admonition of the law, that he shall first be proved to 
be a reasonable being. 
Now-the law requires that in finding this criminal 
responsibility, this design, you shall find it without a 
reasonable doubt. But I am frank to say-and I 
propose to treat you candidly, frankly, fairly-I am 
free to confess to you, gentlemen, that the decisions in 
this state are not wholly in favor of the view which I 
have presented to you concerning the doubt; that is to 
say, the t the court of last appeal have said, not that 
the element of insanity in the broad sense which we 
shall claim for it, must be proved beyond a reasonable 
doubt: they have not presumed to add their authority 
to that of a great many other judges in the state, but 
they have said, we leave that question where it is at 
present; only remarking, concerning the opinion of 
Judge Brown in 16 New Yorii Reports, p. 58, that it 
is entitled, to whatever of weight the acknowledged 
erudition of the judge who rendered it can give to it. 
This was a case where on its trial below evidence had 
been introduced of the defendant's insanity ; the judge 
below had charged that the party who set up the 
insanity of the prisoner, must establish it beyond a 
reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of the jury. Now 
Judge Brown, in reviewing this charge in the court of 
appeals, uses the following language: "It certainly is 
true that sanity is the normal condition of the human 
mind, and in dealing with acts, criminal ®r otherwise, 
there can be no presumption of insanity ; but it is not 
true, I think, upon the traverse of an indictment for 
murder, when the defense of insanity is interposed, 
and the homicide admitted, that the issue is reversed 
and the burden shifted ; the burden is still the same ; BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
13 
it still remains with the prosecution to show the exist- 
ence of those requisites or elements which constitute 
the crime, and of this the intention or malus animus 
of the prisoner is the principal." Further, that 
"notwithstanding the legal presumption, the sanity of 
the prisoner's mind is, under all the definitions of the 
crime, to be made out affirmatively upon the trial as a 
part of the case for the prosecution." 
The attention of the court of appeals was again 
called to this question in 3.2 New York, and there 
the court held that they would not approve of 
the opinion of Judge Brown, that the prisoner was 
entitled to the benefit of a doubt upon the question of 
insanity; but in this case, the case under considera- 
tion by the court at that time, there was no evidence 
introduced on the part of the prisoner as to his insan- 
ity. But in Wagner r. People, 4 Abbotts Court 
of Appeals Decisions, 509, the court of appeals did 
sustain Judge Brown to the extent of saying that 
" where the evidence in a criminal case raises the 
question of insanity, the jury must be satisfied beyond 
a reasonable doubt that the prisoner was sane when 
he committed the act;" but again, they limited the 
application of the doubt to a knowledge of the differ- 
ence between right and wrong. 
Now, gentlemen, we conceive the law to be very 
plain, and it is this : that the District-Attorney is 
not obliged to introduce any evidence of the sanity of 
an ordinary criminal unless the question is raised- 
that it is presumed, as the law does assume, that every 
man is sane : but that if the defense introduce any 
evidence whatever of his insanity, the burden of proof 
is still with the people, and it then becomes an ele- 14 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
ment of the crime at issue ; an element which the 
prisoner has a right to say shall be found positively, 
affirmatively against him, or he shall be entitled to 
acquittal. I think surely I shall have no difficulty 
in establishing to your satisfaction and to that of the 
learned judge who presides here in this case, that we 
are entitled, that the prisoner is entitled here, to any 
reasonable doubt which you may entertain of his 
sanity. Certainly, gentlemen, you must see the force 
of it, if all the line of statutory definitions and com- 
mon-law definitions have regarded sanity, the compe- 
tency to entertain a willful design, as a necessary 
element in the crime, why, then, should not that ele- 
ment be proved as much to your satisfaction as any 
other? Now, assuming that the court, to whom, of 
course, belongs the exclusive prerogative of instruct- 
ing you in the law, and to whose judgment and ap- 
proval I submit anything I have to say in behalf of 
the prisoner (deeming it my right to do so since the 
district-attorney has shown to you what he supposed 
the law governing the case to be), will charge you that 
the prisoner is entitled to a reasonable doubt ; and 
being confident that the district-attorney will be un- 
able to produce any authority from the court of ap- 
peals which shall direct him to do otherwise; it is 
proper for us now to consider what this reasonable 
doubt is. 
I certainly could not stand up in your presence in- 
tending to do my duty, not only as a lawyer but as a 
citizen, and ask you to entertain any flippant defini- 
tion of the doctrine of reasonable doubt. The doubt, 
I say to you with all the earnestness-certainly feeling 
all the earnestness that the district-attorney can feel BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
15 
on the subject-the doubt, I say, must not be some 
flickering, weird suggestion that by some possibility 
this man may not be sane. It must be a*doubt resting 
upon some well-considered hesitation which you have 
as to some part of the evidence, some well-defined 
positive doubt of this character. But I cannot do 
better, certainly, than to read from the collection I 
have made here the definition which I suppose is 
familiar to your Honor, the definition of Chief Justice 
Shaw as to the reasonable doubt, and which I suppose 
will be the law administered to the jury in this case. 
Chief Justice Shaw says, in 5 Cushing, 320, that 
"a reasonable doubt is that state of the case which 
after an entire comparison and consideration of all the 
evidence leaves the minds of jurors in that condition 
that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction 
to a moral certainty of the truth of the charge." 
Now, sincerely believing, as I do, that when you retire 
to determine upon your verdict in this case you will 
care to consider what so distinguished a man has said 
upon this subject, I will, with your permission, read 
this definition again: "•A reasonable doubt is that state 
of the case which after an entire comparison and con- 
sideration of all the evidence leaves the minds of 
jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel 
an abiding certainty of the truth of the charge." 
Forsyth, in his Trial by Jury, page 336, adds some- 
thing to that-certainly whatever weight may attach to 
his name-by saying that "the jury do nothing but 
their strict duty when they declare him to be not 
guilty whom the evidence falls short of convicting, 
however dark and unfavorable their suspicions respect- 
ing him." Asking you then carefully to bear in mind 16 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
this important element of the crime of murder, design: 
asking you to^remember if what I say shall be fortified 
by the opinion of the judge who will charge you upon 
this case, finally, that the prisoner is entitled to the 
benefit of a reasonable doubt upon this important ele- 
ment, his responsible will at the time, I shall now pro- 
ceed not at all to in any way satisfactorily answer that 
great question, "What is insanity?"-but merely to 
present to your consideration some thoughts, some 
opinions which I have culled at some pains from the 
works of master minds in this special domain of 
science. 
Recorder Hackett in MacFarland's case, said that 
" the exact line between sanity and insanity in medi- 
cal jurisprudence, is as intangible and as difficult to 
precisely measure as a meridian line in geography." 
Albert Swayne Taylor, in his work on medical juris- 
prudence, which is before me, which 1 have not time 
to turn to now, says, " It would be difficult to find a 
definition of insanity which includes all who are in- 
sane, and excludes all who are sane." "Words" 
(says Bishop, 1 Criminal Law, p. 389), "but 
imperfectly portray our ideas, but they never go so 
far short as when employed to convey to other minds 
our conceptions of the human soul. The thoughts of 
a man are vagile and uncertain, yet never so vague 
and uncertain as when he is contemplating himself. 
Let us remember then, that if one can never turn his 
eyes within, and see his own sane condition truly, nor 
convey even what he sees in words, so he cannot see 
perfectly the insane mind of another, and especially he 
cannot have what is therein disclosed, conveyed in 
language to him as it is." Now, perhaps there was BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
17 
never a question submitted to a jury which had about 
it such great perplexities as are connected with'this 
question which you are to investigate. Why, gentle- 
men, all the past history and philosophy of the world 
has failed to demonstrate the grandeur of the uni- 
verse about us, and yet whenever man has attempted 
to turn his eyes within him and to compass, if he 
might, this wonderful faculty of reason called his 
mind, he has found an infinity as great within his own 
being as that which he has been able to survey through 
all the space which is known to him, and so I say, 
gentlemen, that we are starting out with a difficult 
question to solve. 
Why, the vulgar idea of insanity which prevails 
among people who have given no attention to the 
question is, that a man who gesticulates, who roars 
frantically, who tears his hair, is a madman, and that 
nobody else is. Now, upon the theory of the prose- 
cution that this man sitting here is simulating in- 
sanity, he should be raving about here, and tearing 
his hair, certainly not preserving that fixed, stolid 
demeanor which has characterized him from the first 
moment I visited him at his cell in Raymond street, 
until this minute, and which will characterize him 
after his fate shall be determined at your hands. I 
say, if it be true that this man is playing a part, if it 
be true that he is simulating this insanity, he has un- 
dertaken a task greater than that undertaken by any 
human being before, and carried out successfully. 
And it is fortunate, gentlemen, that through all this 
devious maze of argument and talk, of reasoning, of 
decision, and doubt, and distrust, he can sit here a 
silent witness in his own behalf, challenging from your 18 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
inspection of his condition, that judgment which the 
most potent tongue could never wring from your 
hearts upon his case. " It is not necessary," says Er- 
skine, in The Kingu Hatfield, " that reason should be 
hurled from her seat; it is enough that distraction sits 
down beside her, holds her trembling in her place, and 
frightens her from her propriety." So long ago as 
1845, Judge Edmonds, a man of undoubted erudition 
and legal acumen, undertook to define this disease of 
insanity, undertook to approximate dimly to some 
rule, which should determine when a person was in- 
sane to the degree of irresponsibility, and the result 
which he reached with all his learning was, that "a 
sane man was one whose senses bore truthful evidence ; 
whose understanding was capable of receiving that 
evidence ; whose reason could draw proper conclusions 
from the evidence thus received ; whose will could 
guide the thought thus obtained ; whose moral sense 
could tell the right and wrong of any act growing out of 
that thought; and whose act could at his own pleasure 
be in conformity with the action of all these qualities. 
All these things unite to make sanity. The absence of 
any one of them is insanity." Now, I am not able to 
say, and I shall frankly confess it, that the highest 
court of this state has taken up the language of Judge 
Edmonds and adopted it, but, gentlemen, the highest 
court in this state has said and do say, that the fact 
of insanity is a question which must be left to the 
jury, and therefore it is that I bring to your assistance 
upon this question whatever benefit you may obtain 
from Judge Edmonds. Because if it be not established 
as the highest decision of the law, certainly it is not BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
19 
disestablished by any authority with which I am 
familiar. 
Now, I desire to submit to you some cardinal prop- 
ositions upon the subject of insanity, and to fortify 
them so far as I may with the opinions of eminent 
writers in science who have devoted their lives to the 
investigation of this subject, and the first principle 
which I maintain before you is one which few will 
gainsay, but nevertheless one which I should call to 
your attention because people are so accustomed to 
regard it as an important element of insanity. The 
proposition is that 
Insanity may exist without delusions. 
"I shall endeavor to show," says Dr. Blandford 
{Insanity and its Treatment, published in Philadel- 
phia in 1871, page 309), " that many patients of un- 
doubtedly insane minds have no delusions; that de- 
lusions are not the one test of unsoundness of mind, 
nor even of insanity, so-called ; and further, beyond 
all question there are persons of unsound mind who 
cannot properly be called insane." Again he says, 
"It is quite certain that various persons are undoubt- 
edly insane who present none of the ordinary delu- 
sions of insanity; they may not have reached the 
stage of delusions, and they may go on to recovery 
without ever reaching it, or they may recover from the 
stage of delusions, yet never perfectly recover." And 
again, " We do not call it impulsive insanity when a 
lunatic all day long tries to smash the windows and 
tears his clothes to shreds, or incessantly endeavors to 
set himself and house on fire, and yet perchance he 
cannot give any reasons for any of these things, but 
has no delusion in connection therewith, he has very 20 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
few delusions." And Dr. W. A. Hammond, who is 
an eminent authority, is of the same opinion (ficFar- 
lanF s Trial, pamphlet edition, page 3). Another 
proposition which we expect to establish by authority, 
to your satisfaction, is that 
A person may be in possession of' his faculties 
sufficiently to distinguish between right and wrong, 
and still be irresponsible for his acts. 
Now, gentlemen, the district attorney has told you 
that the only test for insanity was whether the party 
had a consciousness of right and wrong. I shall at- 
tempt to demonstrate to you that in addition to the 
knowledge of right and wrong, the party must have 
possession of his faculties enough to control his 
actions in accordance with his knowledge. Why, in 
the extreme case I cited a moment ago, that one of 
you should be forced against his will to murder your 
fellow, you might have the full possession of the 
knowledge of the crime-there would be no doubt 
about that-the resistance which you made to your 
neighbor in his attempt to enforce your act would de- 
monstrate that; and yet, gentlemen, under this theory, 
if it be true, if the law establishes any such criterion, 
under this theory you would be a culpable criminal, 
although another controlled you. Now, suppose that 
you had lost all control over yourselves ; suppose that 
it was absolutely impossible for you to exercise the 
will power, which is that wonderful power in man 
which makes him different from the brute in the field, 
that power which makes him God-like, which demon- 
strates his kinship to Divinity itself, this power, this 
royal power of will-suppose you have it not, are you 
still a responsible being ? Ought you to be called into a BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
21 
court of justice, and punished for acts which you never 
did ? Manifestly not, gentlemen. It is high time, 
high time, gentlemen, that we adopted this common- 
sense view of the question, which has been charged 
over and over again at nisi prius by the courts in this 
state-that the party must not -only have a concep- 
tion of right and wrong, but also a controlling power 
as to that conception. 
Now I desire to read to you (and, gentlemen, I am 
sure you will pardon me for being very dry and pro- 
lix upon a question of this character, when you con- 
sider the importance it may be to the prisoner at the 
bar), 1 desire to read ' to you from Henry Maudsley 
(The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind}, who is 
foremost among the authorities upon this subject. 
The District Attorney.-We acknowledge Mauds- 
ley as an authority. 
Mr. Taylor, resuming: I read from the second edi- 
tion, published in 1868 (p. 348). Maudsley cites this 
case. "An old lady, aged seventy-two, who had sev- 
eral members of her family insane, was afflicted with 
recurring paroxysms of convulsive excitement in which 
she always made desperate attempts to strangle her 
daughter, who was very kind and attentive to her. 
During the paroxysms she was so strong and writhed 
so actively that one person could not hold her, but 
after a few minutes struggling, she sank down quite 
exhausted, and panting for breath, would exclaim: 
4 There, there ! I told you-you would not believe how 
bad I was.' No one could detect any delusion in her 
mind, and had she unhappily succeeded in her frantic 
attempts it would certainly have been impossible to say 
honestly that she did not know that it was wrong to 22 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
strangle her daughter." " When, therefore," he says 
again (p. 364), " a person of good social position, pos- 
sessed of the feelings that belong to a certain social 
state, and hitherto without reproach in all the relations 
of life, does, after a cause, known by experience to be 
capable of producing every kind of insanity, suddenly 
undergo a great change of character, and lose all good 
feelings and become shamefully vicious, and brutally 
wicked, then it certainly will not be an act of charity 
but an act of justice to suspect the effects of disease ; 
at any rate it behooves us not to be misled in our judg- 
ment by the manifest existence in such a patient of the 
full knowledge of his acts, of a.consciousness in fact 
of right or wrong, to remember that disease may 
weaken or abolish the power of volition without affect- 
ing consciousness." "Most maniacs have a firm con- 
viction that all they feel and think is true, just and 
reasonable, and nothing can shake their convictions," 
says Dr. Ray (Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity, 
5 ed. p. 17). 
"If insanity must preclude every attempt at design 
or premeditation we may as well reject every other 
principle equally confirmed by every day's observa- 
tion of the insane, and by the numerous examples 
cited in the annals of insanity, and medical jurispru- 
dence in our country and abroad" (M. G. Echeverria, 
in the American Journal of Insanity for January, 
1873). 
" A state of sanity is one in which a man knows the 
act he is committing to be unlawful and morally wrong, 
and has reason sufficient to apply such knowledge 
and be controlled by it" (Recorder Hackett, in Peo- 
ple r. McFarland, 8 Abb. H. 8. 92). BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
23 
Now I will not read further from the authorities 
which I have collected here; they certainly add weight 
to the principle stated by Mr. Maudsley, that tlie pos- 
session of a conscious, controlling power in a man is 
an essential element of his sanity. And, gentlemen, 
you will see that this is founded upon a common- 
sense view of things; because, as I have already sug- 
gested, what avails it to have an intellectual concep- 
tion of the deed which one is about to perform, to 
know that it violates the moral code which he has been 
brought up under, and yet to be without power to re- 
sist it; to have a brain so shattered that it is no longer 
the controlling guide of his life ; to be dismantled, in 
fact, of the very power which enables him to put aside 
the- obstacles which hinder him, and to pass upon 
questions which come to his consideration with an in- 
telligent and responsible judgment ? 
I suppose that you are aware that insane persons 
have very generally, or at least on frequent occasions, 
been possessed of more than ordinary powers both of 
literary composition and scientific acquirement. Why, 
gentlemen, the very judge whose authority I have 
cited to-day, and whose opinion your Honor will, I 
believe, recognize as entitled to great weight, was 
known years before he died to be of the firm convic- 
tion that every day as he passed down the street there 
flitted before him forms from the spirit-world: that 
they followed him about his business; that they ac- 
companied him in his conceptions of the principles of 
law, and guided him in his labors : and he was firmly 
of the belief that whatever rank he obtained was due 
to the direct communication of those spirits to his in- 
dividual presence. Now, probably, the common mind 24 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
would regard a thing of that kind as indicating an ab- 
erration of intellect, at least; but we have never ceased 
to regard his decisions as of the very highest authority. 
With your permission, let me read the following: 
" There is a winter in my soul, 
The winter of despair ; 
Olf! when shall Spring its rage control, 
When shall the snow-drop blossom there ? 
Cold gleams of comfort sometimes dart 
A dawn of glory on my heart, 
But quickly pass away. 
Thus Northern lights that gloom adorn, 
And give the promise of a morn 
That never turns to day. " 
These verses were written by a lunatic in an Eng- 
lish asylum-one quite crazy, but with one portion 
of his intellect not wholly shut out to the conception 
of his condition. And it expresses what I regard, 
gentlemen, as a most beautiful reflection upon the 
moral and intellectual night that had settled down 
upon him. In the case of Dadd, who was 'acquitted 
on the ground of insanity, and who was proved to be 
a confirmed lunatic, it transpired that the man, after 
killing his father, obtained a passport and sailed from 
France, with all the cunning design of a criminal elud- 
ing pursuit, and yet there was no doubt at all of his 
insanity ( TFwZ on Plea of Insanity, page 41). 
Now, gentlemen, one other proposition I want to 
submit to you, and that is, that "It is not incumbent 
upon this defense to establish insanity as a continu- 
ing accompaniment of this man's existence from any 
given time to any given time." 
The question which you will be called upon to an- 
swer is : "Was this man, at the time of the commis- BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
25 
sion of this deed-not, is he now-insane ?" I grant that 
to the people-not is he now, not was he two years 
ago, not was he five minutes before the deed, not was 
he five minutes after the deed-but was he at the time 
of the shooting, in such a possession of the powers of 
reason, given him at his birth, as to be responsible for 
this act ? And in support of that proposition I cite a 
case which will be familiar to the court, and if I am 
wrong in any statement which I make about it, you 
will be sure to hear of it from the industrious counsel 
for the people. The case is the People v. Cole (7 
Abbott''s Pr. N. S. 321). In that case Judge Hoge- 
boom-a man who certainly commanded the respect of 
the bar and the bench-Judge Hogeboom in his charge 
to the jury had left them in some doubt, I think, as 
to the full meaning which should be given to what he 
had said in relation to the time of the insanity, which 
they should find. The jury came in, after having re- 
turned twice for instructions. They came in, in a 
short time, and they said to the court, "We find the 
prisoner sane at the moment before the shooting, and 
sane the moment after the shooting, but are in doubt 
as to his condition at the time of thp shooting," and 
the court charged that they must give the prisoner the 
benefit of the doubt, as the time of the shooting was 
the only criterion. Now, gentlemen, I maintain not the 
proposition that if we were able to show to you, in this 
case, some momentary, temporary freak, which could 
be construed into madness on the part of this prisoner, 
that thereupon you should as true men, making true 
deliverance, between the people and this prisoner, find 
him not guilty ; but I do maintain that you may find 
in the condition of this prisoner at any other time than 26 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
the shooting, such corroboration of the belief you may 
entertain of his sanity or insanity, as may be evi- 
denced by the greater or less weight of those circum- 
stances and conditions. That I believe is within the 
fair construction of all the decisions which have been 
made upon this subject. Now in the case of Murray, 
tried in Edinburgh, in 1858, it was proved that the 
prisoner recovered from his insanity eight hours after 
he had killed the deceased ; he was acquitted upon 
the ground of insanity during the time he committed 
the act. It is cited in Taylor's Medical Jurispru- 
dence, vol. ii., 561. Now thus far I have endeavored 
to lay before you a few propositions which might seem 
to be helpful to you in discharging your duty. I am not 
here to interpose any obstacle between the exercise of 
that very great duty, which is your own individual obli- 
gation, and any punishment which lies in wait for this 
prisoner. If I am correct in the belief which I entertain 
of his condition he is past the effect of any punish- 
ment. The most you can do in that direction will be 
to shelter his family, to shelter his aged mother, who 
will come here and tell you what she knows of the 
story of his life, from the added ignominy of his death 
upon the gallows. Have you, gentlemen, during the 
course of this trial hitherto, have you seen any look 
upon the face of this prisoner that has indicated the 
slightest interest in this case ? If you have, you have 
certainly discovered more than I have done at any 
moment or any hour of my intercourse with him, 
since my duties in relation to him became incumbent 
upon me. So I say to you, so far as Joseph Burroughs 
is concerned, your duties do not afford you scope 
enough to give him a single hour of satisfaction or BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
27 
comfort. When you shall come to bring in your 
verdict in this case he will sit here with the same 
stolid look upon his bloodless face, which has rested 
there during all his trial. Yet there are considerations 
which should lead you to give to this prisoner the 
same impartial trial that you would give to him if he 
hung breathless with emotion upon every sentence 
which came from your lips. 
I want to call your attention to one principle laid 
down by the authorities, which you should bear in 
your mind, and that is, in the words of Dr. Blandford 
(Blandford's Insanity and its Treatment, page 334): 
"The act may be so motiveless that no one can doubt 
it must have been the act of a madman. When a man 
murders one known to be most dear to him, we may 
suspect insanity, and more than suspect;" because I 
believe that will be more than an important consider- 
ation in your minds, when you shall come to consider 
in what condition this man's mind was. 
Now, gentlemen, I have noted three of the superin- 
ducing causes of insanity, which if you will allow me 
to call your attention briefly to, I shall have done with 
this theoretical part of the case, and shall proceed to 
unfold to you the facts which we expect to establish 
on the part of the defense. The first is that in- 
juries to the head are superinducing causes of insanity. 
These injuries, I think, frequently appear in the his- 
tory of these cases, and are recognized as sufficient 
causes for the production of an unsound mind. Mauds- 
ley, in a note to his 2d edition, page 286, quotes from 
Professor Schlager, of Vienna, who says that "in nine- 
teen cases out of five hundred, mental diseases come on 
in the course of a year after the injury, but not till 28 
EXON ERA TIVE IN SANI T Y. 
much later in many others; and in four cases not till 
after ten years; in most of the cases the patients were 
disposed to congestion of the brain, excitement, and 
great emotional disturbance and excitement on taking 
a moderate quantity of intoxicating liquor. There was 
ringing in the ears, or difficulty of hearing"-both of 
which are pronounced facts in the case of this pris- 
oner-" very commonly the disposition was changed, 
and the patient was prone to outbursts of anger or 
excesses." 
Again, we shall maintain before you that intempe- 
rate habits of themselves tend to produce a deteriora- 
tion ; are considered inducing causes of this disease of 
the brain. "There are cases," says Henry Maudsley 
(page 474), "in which positive insanity is produced 
by drink; and they are sometimes the occasion of 
great injustice being done by our legal tribunals. 
Some persons, who have a strong predisposition to 
insanity, or who have been once insane, or who have 
had a severe injury of the head at some time, do 
actually become truly maniacal for a while after an 
alcoholic debauch, or are rendered temporarily mani- 
acal, being probably thought drunk, by a very little 
liquor." 
"A thorough diagnosis, involving a history of the 
patient, a close scrutiny into preceding circumstances, 
would, more frequently than is done, identify alcohol 
as the predisposing cause, the great disturber. This 
poison may be said to act directly on the nervous 
centers, and it is noticeable that the encephalic por- 
tion seems to be the special field for its disturbing 
chemical action. An affinity seems to exist between 
alcohol and nervous matter, which may account for BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
29 
its special power in deranging the nervous system" 
{Methomania, by Albert Day). 
" While we must admit hereditary influence to be 
the most powerful factor in the causation of insanity, 
there can be no doubt that intemperance stands next 
to it in the list of efficient causes ; it acts not only as 
a frequent exciting cause where there is hereditary 
predisposition, but is an original cause of cerebral 
and mental degeneracy, as a producer of the dis- 
ease de novo" {Responsibility in Mental Disease, 
Maudsley, 1876, p. 283). 
Now, gentlemen, I have referred to this as among 
the superinducing causes of insanity, partly because 
the case of the prosecution, as shadowed forth in the 
evidence which has so far been presented to your con- 
sideration, seemed to indicate that an attempt was to 
be made here to show that Joseph Burroughs was 
under the influence of liquor at the time of this trans- 
action, and was therefore not excused by ihe law for 
his participation in it. We shall abundantly satisfy 
you, gentlemen, I think, that no such stato of things 
could possibly have existed, and if you shall not iind 
that that was an all-efficient cause of it, then, of neces- 
sity you will be turned over to the other horn of the 
dilemma, and you will be obliged to see in it such a 
state of weakened physical powers, such a low tone of 
the system, as showed a mind of deteriorated brain- 
fiber, waiting to be ignited by some exciting cause 
which should burst forth into the uncontrollable rage 
of the maniac. 
Now, another efficient cause, and the last to which 
I shall call your attention, is sleeplessness ; and I now 
refer to Dr. Hammond's synopsis of the general sub- 30 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
ject of insanity, found in the edition of the trial of 
Daniel McFarland, published by W. E. Hilton, of 
Nassau street, which I have obtained from the library 
below, where he says that "with the wakefulness of 
the patient, combined with great mental and physical 
irritability, the patient is occupied with the thoughts 
and emotion which have engaged his attention during 
the day, and he dwells upon them, not only with in- 
tensity of thought, but often with an intellect per- 
turbed and perverted from the mode of action natural 
to him. He may likewise have illusions, delusions, 
hallucinations, and only towards morning obtain a lit- 
tle sleep, but then is disturbed with dreadful dreams 
which prevent his being refreshed. His whole nervous 
system is in such a state that he paces the chamber 
the greater part of the night, or seeks the open air, or 
walks the streets until thoroughly exhausted, mentally 
and physically, when he succeeds in getting a little 
quiet slumber. Persons thus unfortunately situated 
must beware how they allow their duties and pleasures 
to interfere with that recuperative process which is in- 
dispensable to their perfect safety. The records of our 
private asylums show a large proportion of cases in 
which the disease was attributable chiefly to this 
cause, which a little more prudence would have pre- 
vented." 
Now, gentlemen, you are certainly no more con- 
scious than myself of the sketchy, superficial character 
of these indications which I have thrown out to you ; 
but, when you come to reflect upon the questions which 
we are considering, it seems to me you will observe 
that the most we can hope to do in this honest investi- 
gation which we are making in this case, is, to feebly B URRO UGHS ADDRESS. 
31 
probe after information, which shall be of such a 
general character as shall enable us, if remembered 
and thought upon, to rightly consider the facts of this 
case, which I now proceed to disclose to you, as we 
believe we shall be able to prove them. 
Joseph Burroughs was born about thirty-nine years 
ago. He was of an humble parentage. Up to the age 
of fourteen years or thereabouts, he was a bright, 
active boy, a boy of good behavior, a boy of consid- 
erable promise. At that time he accidentally sustained 
an injury behind his ear, near the brain, which by the 
way, he could never have simulated. The District 
Attorney will find himself called upon to demonstrate 
to your satisfaction when he comes to close this case, 
as I have so often before remarked, that this man is 
simulating. Gentlemen, you can have ocular demon- 
stration, if you desire it, of the presence behind his 
ear of such an injury as the physicians, whom we may 
call to testify in this case, will declare to you might 
have been (we shall not claim that insanity was a 
necessary effect of such an injury), productive of in- 
flammation that could have been sufficient, when taken 
in connection with the other circumstances of his life, 
wholly to overpower the reason which God had given 
him. 
After this injury, gentlemen, he became stupid. 
All the rest of the family, most of whom you will have 
the opportunity of personally observing, are possessed, 
if I am any judge, of a degree of intelligence and 
frank, open-hearted expression not at all common to 
persons in their rank in life ; but this boy after the 
injury was stupid, intractable, unable to learn to read 
or write, although he was born here on Long Island, 32 
EXON ER A TIVE INSANITY. 
in Newtown, not far away. He was, therefore, put 
early at a trade, and about this time his father died. 
He learned the mason's trade ; it was an humble occu- 
pation, it was an honest occupation, it was one not 
calculated to afford him an opportunity for making a 
large display in the world, but one, I imagine, quite 
as essential as many other occupations, certainly, in 
the community-an honest, healthful, thriving trade. 
Now, gentlemen, when he arrived at the age of twenty- 
six years, he married a Miss Maggie Camp. When 
the District Attorney insisted upon going behind the 
record of the man's life with the woman that he shot, 
and saying to you that he expected to show cruelty 
on the part of this man against his first wife, I did 
suppose that dwelling on his connection with that first 
dead woman, he would introduce some shadow of 
proof upon which he might conscientiously rest the 
stigma which he had cast upon that relation. Have 
you heard anything of it ? Has there fallen a word 
from the mouth of any one of these witnesses here 
which reflects in the slightest degree upon this poor 
man's relation with that woman? Not a scintilla, not 
a particle! A wholesale, unsupported defamation of 
a man whose reason is gone, and whose tongue is 
speechless. His relations with his first wife, I think, 
were pleasant; they were of the most tender nature. 
We are prepared to show to you, on the part of the 
defense, conclusively, that those relations were pleasant, 
and if the District Attorney has forgotten to put in 
the evidence relating to them, he will have an oppor- 
tunity to do so upon the rebuttal, perhaps, and we 
shall be prepared to meet that issue whenever he may 
present it to our consideration. BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
33 
Now, before that time-before he married. Maggie 
Camp-the woman whom he shot, knew him. If he 
was a bad. man then, she knew him; if his • relations 
with that first wife were such as have been indicated, 
by the district attorney, she knew it; and yet three 
months had not elapsed after the death of that first 
wife, before this woman hustled this man, half fool 
and the other half crazy, off in a carriage at night, and 
married him. Now, I desire to speak guardedly and 
with a peculiar degree of reverence concerning a woman 
whose lips are cold in death, and who can never answer 
any assertions made against her character. Far be it 
from my intention, though I bristled all over with 
facts, to undertake to defame that woman by any word 
of mine; unless, gentlemen, you might draw such a 
conclusion from the facts which it has become neces- 
sary for us to present to you, concerning her, in order 
to demonstrate to you that this man's relations with 
her were of a widely different nature from those that 
have been indicated by the witnesses for the prosecu- 
tion. It is my unpleasant duty to state to you, gentle- 
men-a duty from which I dare not shrink, a duty 
which is shared with me by distinguished counsel in 
this case for the defense-that when this man entered 
upon the relations with this woman that he did, she 
had already given birth to a child for whom no man 
stood up in the whole community and claimed the 
parentage. And surely if you shall discover in such 
a disclosure, made to a man after assuming marital 
relations with a woman, anything which should fire 
his brain and dethrone his reason, and unsettle his 
sentiments with regard to right and wrong, why, then, 
you will but follow, I think, the instincts of human 34 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
nature which are alike to every man. The fact exists; 
it is a part of this case ; it is one of those circumstances 
which make up this revolting record as it has been in 
part presented to you. It is our duty to maintain it 
and proclaim it. 
Now, this woman, Miss Kinsman, the name under 
which she was married to Joseph Burroughs, was at 
the time of her marriage an inmate of the house of 
Mrs. Burroughs, the mother of Joseph. She had for 
some time been occupying relations of supposed inti- 
macy, with a view to marriage, with a young man in 
the neighborhood, and it was the common expectation 
of that household that she would be married to him. 
But when Mrs. Burroughs, the mother of the prisoner, 
discovered an unexpected arrival in her household, 
whose maternity was not in dispute, because impossible 
to be disputed, the feelings of this honest woman, who 
had reared a household of children, and stood the only 
guardian left of their honor and their moral sense of 
duty-her feelings were outraged, and she said to this 
Miss Kinsman: " You must unfold to this young man 
the circumstances which have happened here ; it is 
hardly right that you should enter into this sacred 
relation which you propose to enter into with him, 
unless he shall be informed of those other intimate 
relations which you have established with the father 
of this child, and if you do not tell him, it becomes my 
duty as a Christian woman, with a regard for the 
decencies of society, with some regard for his own wel- 
fare, to see that he shall be informed of it, and I shall 
do it." Miss Kinsman's ideas of the proprieties of 
that information differed from Mrs. Burroughs', and 
she thought it quite compatible with whatever views B URRO UGHS ADDRESS. 
35 
she entertained of the relation she was to assume, that 
it should be assumed in utter ignorance of any such 
circumstance. Mrs. Burroughs, however, finally pre- 
vailed upon her to make that revelation, and when she 
made it, the man whose affections had been absorbed 
in her fainted away at her feet, and of course the rela- 
tions between them were dissevered. 
Nowt, gentlemen, I think you will acquit me of going 
outside the professional duty which I have assumed 
in this case, needlessly. I should deserve to be stricken 
down here in your presence if I could allow it to be 
possible, that for any purposes of sensation, for any 
purpose of enlisting feelings which ought not to be 
enlisted in this case, I should attempt to throw a stone 
against the character of this dead woman. I could not 
find it possible to do so, and in saying what I have, I 
run the risk of acquittal at your hands of any such 
design, because I think that you will see that this fact 
once admitted, it is the pivotal point about which all 
.these relations turn, and unsolves the hidden mystery 
of what it was that turned the mind of Joseph Bur- 
roughs into vacuity, and fixed upon him that steady 
gaze into the future or to some far-off quarter which 
has never left his face since he entered this room. 
Now, when this infant was found there, it became, 
of course, the subject of earnest conference in the fam- 
ily, and Mrs. Burroughs' proposition was that the 
girl should be turned out of doors. I doubt not, gen- 
tlemen, that you can rightly understand how outraged 
must have been the feelings of a woman who had 
raised in obscurity, and by hard toil, but honestly, a 
family of children, to find harbored in her household 
a woman of this character ; and perhaps you will find 36 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
in that sufficient cause for the stern opinion of this 
woman that she must be turned out of doors. But 
a younger sister of the prisoner here interfered in 
the matter, and at her solicitation she was retained in 
the house. She represented to her mother the condi- 
tion of the woman turned out upon the streets under 
such circumstances, and finally prevailed upon the 
old lady to allow her to remain in the household; and 
it was about a year after that disclosure that this wo- 
man and Joseph Burroughs left the house by stealth 
in the night and were married. The false step I have 
mentioned was unknown to Joseph Burroughs, of 
course, when he entered upon this relationship. You 
can hardly assume that the man would openly enter 
upon any such relationship with a woman concerning 
whom he knew this fact. But very shortly after Jo- 
seph Burroughs was married to this woman, it was dis- 
closed to him, and I think you can readily understand 
that it precipitated into his domestic affairs a constant 
element of unrest and disquietude. It certainly was a 
reflection calculated above all other reflections to dis- 
quiet this man, to render him liable to magnify any 
little departure of that woman from the strict line of 
virtue or propriety, or even domestic companionship : 
and yet, gentlemen, in spite of that, so strong was the 
attachment of this man for that woman, that there has 
never been a time during the history of his acquaint- 
ance with her, when he has not worshiped the very 
ground upon which she walked. I shall not undertake 
to demonstrate to you, men of the world, family men, 
business men, how it is that such a feeling could re- 
tain possession of him. I think it is common to all 
our observations that such feelings are enlisted-the BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
37 
strength of their retention, and the reality of their 
existence. However that may be, it did exist in this 
case and it never deserted him. 
Now, Joseph Burroughs contracted at some time in 
his life the habit of drinking intoxicating liquors. 
He was a hard-working man ; he worked steadily, 
faithfully ; at times he drank liquor, that is a fact in 
the case; it is a fact which we freely admit, it is a 
fact we have no disposition to deny, because, gentle- 
men, although it may seem, from the efforts which 
have been made by the prosecuting attorney to build 
up a rampart of rum about this case, that he expected 
to walk over that unsolid foundation to a verdict of 
guilty at your hands, yet we expect that you will 
not try this case upon that issue, and we freely, 
frankly say to you that, concerning the use of intoxi- 
cating liquors, Joseph Burroughs did indulge in them. 
And we are confident that we shall be able to show to 
you, if you have not already surmised it from the 
evidence that has been given, that the threats and the 
vile language which he indulged in, as testified to by 
these witnesses, was the result of this undue use of 
liquor. He was continually endeavoring to master 
this habit. He had at home a wife concerning whose 
qualities for keeping his house in order, for doing 
those various little things by which the wife of a 
poor man always has it in her power to add to the 
happiness of her husband, I shall not stop to com- 
ment upon. If it shall become necessary for us to ask 
the witnesses, during the course of the case for the 
defense, what they were, it will probably be done, and 
it will be sufficiently disclosed to you; but I think, 
gentlemen, you will find that without saying anything 38 
EXON ERA TIVE IN SAN IT Y. 
particularly against her in that direction, they were 
certainly not of a character to lure him to the house- 
hold-they were certainly not such as to keep him 
well poised in his determination to rescue himself 
from this habit. He had, however, thrown off this 
habit, to a great extent, and we shall bring to your 
notice and offer before you the employers of this 
man, who will tell you how much of a "drunken 
vagabond" he has been through a certain portion of 
his life. On election-day, after he had continued 
working for two months after his wife had left him, 
for a short time he began to drink ; and he drank, as 
was his usual custom when he did drink, for one or 
two days, and since that time we think it will be im- 
possible for the district attorney to show you that he 
has indulged in the use of intoxicating liquors to any 
extent. Now, this man's wife had left him. She was 
to him, no matter how disordered her relations with 
him, no matter how very far from that which ordinary 
men in his condition would regard as preferable and 
desirable, she was, nevertheless, to him the one neces- 
sary element of his happiness and his safety ; and she 
was away from him, and he solicited her to return, 
and from the day of the election to the day of the 
shooting, his mind continued in an aggravated state of 
ferment, excitement, sleeplessness, restlessness, with- 
out any mitigation. The Sunday before the Saturday 
of the shooting, he was in a wild, crazy state about 
the house; his mother was with him, his niece was 
with him. He was sitting in the front basement, when 
suddenly he started up and ran out into the back 
basement, where the dinner-table was set, seized a 
knife and attempted to cut his throat, and it bears the BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
39 
mark to-day, as the doctors will assure you. Now, 
that was six days before the shooting-will the 
district attorney tell you that that was simulation ? The 
medical authorities say that simulation is rarely 
assumed until after the occurrence for which the 
prisone." is indicted. If he had shot his wife and then 
undertaken suicide, you would be left the opportunity 
for believing that he did it to cheat the law of its due ; 
but, gentlemen, he began his tragic manifestations in 
the history of this case by attempting his own life- 
that was his condition of sanity. Monday night he 
sent for a pious woman connected with the church 
which he had attended, and beseeched of her that she 
would pray with him for his salvation, and there upon 
the floor they knelt together for an hour and a half; 
he beseeching for salvation, and she joining in his 
plea; he saying that his wife was the only obstacle 
between him and salvation, and she undertaking to 
soothe his excited utterances by a petition to the God 
who watches over us all, that His influence would 
shine down upon his heart and illuminate it with the 
light of divine apprehension. 
Now, gentlemen, does the murderer, does the man 
between whom and the people stands the law, begin his 
work of murder on his bended knees ? Does he call in 
assistants from the neighborhood to add their entreaties 
to his before he starts out on his errand of death and 
bloodshed, to ransack your house and pillage society ? 
Certainly not, gentlemen, certainly not; and yet there 
will be no doubt about these facts. 
Has the prisoner slept at all during that week ? 
We shall show you that he did not. We shall show 
you that on Wednesday night he ranged up and down 40 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
through the house, until he finally awoke his aged 
mother here, who, tired with watching, was getting a 
little sleep from the "bosom of the night," and bent 
over her in a position, gentlemen, which I know not 
how it may impress you, but which certainly suggests 
to me the horrid thought that he was about to begin his 
work of 'tragedy by sacrificing the mother who had 
borne him, to his insane frenzy. Now, gentlemen, 
where was the motive for this act which this man has 
committed? Was it revenge upon his wife? Why 
begin with himself, and second that with the life of 
his mother? 
Thursday night found him in an unabated condi- 
tion of excitement, sleepless, perturbed, walking- 
through the house with his stockings in his bands and 
his shoes under his arm, in a perfect condition of rest- 
lessness, designated by the gentlemen from whom I 
have read to you as among the most prominent indicia 
of insanity; and so it went on until Friday night. 
The district attorney told you that he expected to show 
to you that this man Burroughs was lurking about the 
house of this woman on Friday night, if I remember, 
and he expected that you would draw from that the 
conclusion, as you would doubtless have been entitled 
to, that there was a wicked, persistent, devilish design 
about the man inconsistent with the theory of his 
insanity. Has he shown any such thing ? Is there any 
evidence that Burroughs was lurking about the house 
the night before? There is evidence that he talked 
with a man who lived somewhere in the neighborhood. 
Was he lurking about? He made known his presence 
to the man-went and talked about some ordinary mat- 
ter ; certainly that cannot be construed, by the most B URRO UGHS ADDRESS. 
41 
imaginative, powers any of you possess, into any lurk- 
ing on the part of the prisoner. 
We shall then, gentlemen, show you in behalf 
of the prisoner: 
First. That he was an industrious and orderly 
citizen. 
Second. That he had no motive for killing the 
deceased. 
Third. That he had been previously uncontroll- 
able, restless and sleepless at night. 
Fourth. That he had for weeks been laboring 
under intense religious excitement. 
Fifth. That he had prayed for hours at a time 
to be relieved from the burden of his sin. 
Sixth. That he imagined that his wife stood be- 
tween him and salvation. 
Seventh. That near relatives of the blood were 
unquestionably insane. 
Eighth. That he attempted his own life, and 
nearly succeeded, six days before the shooting. 
Ninth. That he has never denied the commis- 
sion of the deed. 
Tenth. That he made no attempt to escape. 
Eleventh. That he expressed no sorrow or regret 
for the deed; and, 
Twelfth. That to no person connected with this 
case has he expressed any interest in its result. 
These, gentlemen, are brief indications, imperfect 
suggestions, of the facts which we expect to present to 
your consideration. They constitute, I think, with 
the medical testimony which we shall introduce, from 
those who have examined this prisoner on more than 
one occasion since the shooting, and from their opinion, 42 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
as they shall give it to you upon the facts in this case, 
and the insane history of his relatives-they constitute 
a chain of circumstances, of scientific judgment upon 
the circumstances, which, coupled with what you may 
observe about this man yourselves, will, as I believe, 
lead you irresistibly to the conclusion that he has 
never been responsible for the shooting which it is 
acknowledged he did. 
And now, gentlemen, I have done. 
Friendless, illiterate, staring vacantly at this dread- 
ful drama in which is involved no smaller issue than 
his life or death, Joseph Burroughs asks only at your 
hands that full measure of justice which is at once the 
right and privilege of the best and basest of mankind. 
If you can find in that stormy week of excitement pre- 
ceding this dreadful catastrophe an intellect sufficiently 
clear, a brain well enough balanced to weigh with 
responsible judgment the action to which his mad delu- 
sion drove him, then he must suffer the full penalty of 
the law which he has consciously violated. I have no 
shield to interpose between any violator of the law and 
its merited penalty. I am painfully conscious, gentle- 
men, of the imperfect manner in which I have per- 
formed the task which has been allotted to me in this 
case. Fortunately for the prisoner, at the conclusion 
of this issue, you will be addressed, in his behalf, by 
distinguished counsel, who will pass before your con- 
sideration all the evidence in this case, subjecting it to 
the most rigid scrutiny and the most careful analysis. 
We now present our evidence to your intelligent judg- 
ment. We desire by no legal jugglery to divert your 
minds from the painful issue which you are called 
upon to decide. The basis of society is not so well BURROUGHS ADDRESS. 
43 
settled that it should lose any element of strength by 
your adjudication. If the death of this wretched im- 
becile is necessary to preserve more stable the pillars 
of the temple of justice, let him meet the fate that 
awaits him. Let no over-rash zeal of counsel substi- 
tute a view of this unhappy circumstance inconsistent 
with the verdict of your deliberate attention. 
Yet, gentlemen, while it may be a matter of small 
consequence to either you or me, whether the man 
Joseph Burroughs shall be found guilty or not guilty, 
it is of vast, illimitable concern to the great civiliza- 
tion in which we live-it is of endless importance to 
the very life of society itself-whether a being, bereft 
of reason, floating rudderless on the ocean of tempta- 
tion and strife, shall be judged in the calm, sober at- 
mosphere of pitying sympathy and love, or in the hot 
heat of revenge and retaliation; for, wretched and 
depraved as this poor prisoner may be, standing un- 
friended in this open court of justice, gazed upon and 
hawked at by the rabble in the lobby, there are yet 
chords of human tenderness and hope which knit his 
heart to that of each of you twelve men by the indis- 
soluble bonds of a common brotherhood. 
If the deed for which he is indicted be a crime, it is 
a crime utterly motiveless. No mad passion fired his 
arm ; no secret jealousy poisoned his judgment or 
palsied his moral nature. With the discharge of his 
pistol, all his hopes were blighted. With the fall- of 
his wife, fell every element of happiness to him. He 
loved her even and literally to distraction. He saw 
nothing but good around her or about her. To him she 
was little less than an angel; nay, she was an angel; 
and since her sad death, she has, as he believes, 44 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
opened the door of his wretched cell and shone upon 
him with angelic benedictions. 
Alas, gentlemen, there was a time when Burroughs 
was not the wretched man you now behold him-a 
time when his tender breath sweetened and warmed 
this aged mother's bosom. There was a time when his 
shouts rung high and joyous in those happy, happy 
moments of boyhood which we all delight to think 
upon. But the grave early closed over his father, 
and, groping blindly through his checkered way of 
life, he has wandered out into the boundless ocean of 
utter emptiness, a battered, storm-tossed hulk, with- 
out compass or guide, drifting, drifting, drifting to 
no certain end of the earth-aimless, will-less, emo- 
tionless-all the chords of his moral restraint cut 
loose, every star of heaven shut out from his vision, 
with the slender wick of reason burning feebly in its 
socket, if not already put out. 
Judge him, then, gentlemen, as he is; and if, on 
the one hand, you see an offended law and the public 
weal in jeopardy, listen, also, on the other, to that 
benign utterance of the divine Nazarene, who, eight- 
een hundred years ago, from the thunder-rocked hill 
of Calvary, with an omniscient view of the maniac 
crowd around him, breathed towards heaven that sub- 
limest expression of charity ever uttered upon earth, 
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do." THE FUCHS CASE. THE FUCHS CASE. 
41 
[Andreas Fuchs was indicted for the murder of William Simmons 
and brought to trial during the first week of April, 1876, at the court 
of Oyer and Terminer for Kings County, Mr. Justice Pratt presiding. 
It was conceded that he had caused Simmons' death, but it was claimed 
that he was not in his right mind and was actuated by an uncontroll- 
able frenzy upon discovering Simmons in flagrante delicto with the 
prisoner's wife. The brutal disposition of the body, Fuchs having 
cut it up and thrown the head in a ship-yard, at Greenpoint, buried 
other parts in a field and secreted portions of it about his house, 
justly excited much feeling against him in the community. He was 
defended by Mr. H. B. Kinghorn, who opened the case, and John A. 
Taylor, acting as senior counsel, summed up the case in the following 
speech, which is a transcript of the stenographer's notes. He was 
convicted of murder in the first degree, and sentenced to be hung, but 
upon application to the Governor the sentence was commuted to im- 
prisonment for life, and he was committed to Sing Sing prison. Sub- 
sequently he was transferred to Auburn. 
Although the theory of his insanity was much ridiculed by the 
press and rejected by the jury, he is now confined iu the State asylum 
for the insane at Auburn, to which place lie was removed on the 
30th day of November, 1878. 
A letter from Dr. Theodore Dimon, late superintendent of that 
institution, dated April 6, 1880, says: "From however, the form 
and description of his insanity and his manifestations of it here, viz.: 
chronic mania, ordinarily quiet and apparently sane, with occasional 
periods of disturbance, and the fact that manifestations of delusion 
and irritability could at any time easily be made to appear by con- 
versation directed to that end; this having been his uniform history 
now for nearly a year and a half, and the fact that he had delusions 
which were recognized by prison officers for over a year before he 
came here, it is quite probable that what was considered, very bad 
temper for the first year at Auburn prison was also insanity."] 48 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
ADDRESS. 
May itplease the Court: Gentlemen of the Jury : 
I desire to express my grateful acknowledgment 
to the court and to you, gentlemen, for the indulgence 
which was granted me on last Friday, in adjourning 
the discussion of this important case until this morn- 
ing. I believe that we shall come to it with a calmer 
consideration, shall give to it a wiser judgment and be 
better qualified in passing upon it finally, to render 
such a verdict as will be in consonance with the true 
history of this poor laborer, and with the preservation 
of the public rights. 
The condition of civilization has been said to be 
marked by the value which it places upon human life, 
and I am not here to ask you to do anything in this 
case which shall render the life of the humblest citizen 
of our great community less safe, or which shall 
jeopardize any of the many interests in which we all 
have a common property. 
If you believe that the prisoner at the bar is a 
bloody butcher-if he has all those elements which have 
been expressed by the painters and the poets of the 
past on canvas and in song, as making up that thing 
which we call " the murderer"-then I cannot ask you 
that he shall escape, in the slightest degree, any law, 
which the wisdom of centuries has perfected, and 
which the present generation has kept sacred upon the 
statute books for the punishment of such men. 
But one of the earliest sections of our State con- 
stitution prescribes that "no person shall be deprived 
of life, liberty or property without due process of FUCHS ADDRESS. 
49 
law," and this provision but expresses in new terms 
that older guaranty which for six centuries has been 
the protection of the common people, as set forth in 
Magna Charta itself in the promise of the crowned 
head, that "Neither justice nor right shall be sold, 
denied or delayed to any one." 
And, gentlemen, it is in obedience to that organic 
rule of the government, that to this man, as to every 
citizen of this commonwealth, is secured the inestima- 
ble privilege of bringing himself before twelve freemen 
of the Republic, who shall be without bias and shall 
be fitted by their occupation and their variety of 
opinions and personal history to give to the considera- 
tion of the charge which shall be preferred against 
him, their sober, unimpassioned, impartial attention. 
And the treatment of this case, as developed by 
the press and the general public, demonstrates the 
necessity inbred in the very elements of human nature 
itself which exists for this institution. 
What has been the history of this accusation from 
the first day when the discovery of this killing was 
made public to the present. Has there been a single 
paragraph written in all this great city-*-has there 
been a single voice lifted up-that should tend in the 
slightest degree to mitigate the public opinion which 
has rashly fastened upon this poor man, or to portray 
to the public at large the real circumstances governing 
this case. Not until my associate, Mr. Kinghorn, 
arose in this court to address you, has it been my 
fortune to hear or read any such thing. 
Now this is an exceedingly unequal contest. The 
prisoner is both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate 
in having to preside at his trial a large-hearted, clear- EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
50 
headed jurist,-unfortunate in that he is defended by 
two gentlemen whom the district attorney very justly 
stated were younger members of the bar; fortunate in 
that he brings to your consideration his case, instead 
of to the general public; unfortunate in that in the 
preparation of that case he has been as one walking 
blindly with his hands tied behind him; forturfate 
in that the circumstances of his case commend him Jo 
your most kindly commiseration ; unfortunate in that 
I shall be followed when I shall have finished my 
feeble effort in his behalf, by a gentleman more per- 
haps than any other member of our bar distinguished 
for his sagacity, his plausibility, his powers of elo- 
quence and his learning in the law. 
Now I do not desire to dwell improperly upon the 
labors of counsel in this case, but it is matter of 
simple justice for me to say to you that if you have 
discovered any creditable preparation of evidence on 
the part of the defense, or anything which under all 
the possibilities of the case has led you to believe 
that efficient efforts have been put forth in that direc- 
tion, then I frankly and willingly say to you, gentle- 
men, that it is due to the untiring industry of my asso- 
ciate. He has had the entire charge of the preparation 
of this case so far as seeing the witnesses and procuring 
the evidence has been concerned. 
Before I call your attention to the legal aspects of 
this case,-by which I mean the law under which, in 
my apprehension, you will be called upon to decide this 
proceeding, as it shall be afterwards expounded to you 
by the learned judge who presides,-it is proper that 
you should be reminded of some of those general 
incidents of the law which surround every man appre- FUCHS ADDRESS. 
51 
bended or supposed to be apprehended in the commis- 
sion of a crime-provisions which have their seat and 
root in the very heart of civilization itself-provisions 
which stand as firmly about each one of you twelve 
men and stand as ready to shield each one of you in 
any exigency of your lives, as they do this man. 
Edmund Burke it was,-a gentleman certainly a 
master of human motives and passions,-who said that 
"mercy was as essential an element of criminal law as 
equity was of the civil law and a judge in Penn- 
sylvania, when a question arose upon the necessity for 
the presence of a prisoner at his trial, and whether he 
could be convicted during his absence, used this lan- 
guage : "It would be contrary to the dictates of hu- 
manity to let him waive the advantage which a view of 
his sad plight might give him by inclining the hearts 
of the jury to listen to his defense with indulgence." 
(Paine v. Commonwealth, 6 Harris [Pa.] 103.) 
So; gentlemen, when the district attorney shall 
come to ask you to consider this case in the steel-cold 
light of technical law and by the rigid rule which 
would govern an intelligent and highly-educated and 
developed man under the same circumstances, I shall 
hope that you will remember that you are not called 
upon when you enter this panel to eliminate from 
your constitutions any element of mercy and charity, 
but are at full liberty to look upon this unfortunate 
man with mercy in your hearts and with a tender 
regard for those circumstances which have made his 
life different from yours and mine. 
Again, he is presumed to be innocent. All along 
the course of this trial, through all the time which 
we have spent in it, there has not been an hour or a 52 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
moment when you have not been bound to interpret 
every fact which came to your knowledge by this 
supreme protection of the law-that a prisoner is 
presumably innocent. And he is entitled to be 
shielded in your judgment continually up to the 
decisive hour of your verdict upon his actions, by this 
constant ally of his fortunes, grappling with every fact 
of this case, contesting every inch of the ground and 
attacking every sinister incident of the case. 
And, gentlemen, the law has yet a further general 
defense for the prisoner, which is-that to him belongs 
any reasonable doubt upon the whole case. It is fair 
to the people and to him, that I should say that this 
reasonable doubt is not any trifling hesitation which 
you may have upon the subject or upon any aspect of 
this case. I have no desire that this man shall escape 
any merited punishment which the law may have in 
store for him. I must ask you now to believe that the 
lawyer who comes into court in defense of one accused 
of crime, does not thereby lay aside a part of his 
being and leave it at home-does not thereby forget 
that he is bound by the ties of citizenship and family 
to the community of which he forms a part, and that 
there is an allegiance higher than that he owes to his 
client even, and one which he dares not forfeit. I say 
to you then that this doubt, as the court will instruct 
you, must be a reasonable one, must be well founded, 
must have point and pith about it in your judgment; 
but if there be such a doubt as to any of the material 
allegations of this indictment, you are bound then by 
your consciences,-nay, you would be bound without 
any oath, to give the benefit of it to this man who is 
found under these circumstances contending for his FUCHS ADDRESS. 
53 
life against the wealth, the learning, and the power of 
a public prosecution. 
Now, gentlemen, I have called your attention to 
these cardinal rules of law applicable to this case, 
because I want you to bear them in mind at every 
stage of these proceedings. There is no potentate in 
Europe-there sits a crown on no kingly head-that 
can give it power enough to stand in such a relation 
to this prisoner as you stand. You have in charge 
the entire destinies of his life. It is the most dignified 
and sacred office which you will have fulfilled if you 
shall live far beyond the time usually allotted to man- 
kind. It is in itself an indication of that matchless 
power which has given to our civilization its advanced 
stand-point-the power of the individual citizen him- 
self-the dignity of every man under the common- 
wealth,-his equality, as to his rights, with all his 
fellows. 
Now there are some things which have crept into 
this case which are to be entirely excluded from your 
consideration. So far as I had any part in the selec- 
tion of this jury, I think you will bear me out in the 
assertion that I desired to bring this prisoner before 
men of intelligence, men with hearts, men of principle 
-men who were bound by ties of interest to this 
municipality, and who would pass upon these cir- 
cumstances with that sober judgment which should 
be given to it at the hands of the proper representa- 
tives of the people. And with a faith in the success 
of our efforts in that regard, I address you, not as men 
who are not familiar readers of the daily press, nor as 
men who can read an account of a crime and not be 
impressed by it. And I shall ask you, therefore, to 54 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
put out of your minds some of those features of this 
prosecution which have been seized upon by the press 
as the salient points in the case, as if they were the 
elements which constituted the crime against your 
household, as if they were the objects against which 
the policy of our law was framed at the beginning. 
I ask a ou then, gentlemen, to put out of all con- 
sideration, in arriving at your verdict in this case, any 
public clamor about the prisoner, any thoughtless 
ravings of such as have caught up some slender thread 
of a narrative-have jumped with lightning speed to 
some lame conclusion therefrom, and have paraded 
their theory for the acceptance of an intelligent com- 
munity in the columns of the newspapers. 
I shall ask the court to instruct you that all 
this horrid detail of the disposition of the body after 
the killing-all that which is calculated to excite un- 
just views of the case, when we come to consider the 
real issue of it, is to be excluded entirely from your 
mind, unless you shall find in it some element of con- 
tradiction to the theory which the defense will insist 
upon in this case. If you do, gentlemen, scan it 
thoroughly; unseal every hidden passage in it; ran- 
sack every vital element about it, and see that justice 
be done to this commonwealth as well as to the 
prisoner. 
In his opening, the district attorney said that the 
prisoner peeled the flesh from the bones of his victim. 
Well, if that had been done when the man were 
alive, if it had been a part of the killing, it would 
have made it a "cruel and inhuman killing" within 
the language of the statute, and would have raised a 
presumption of malice in your minds, which the story FUCHS ADDRESS. 
55 
of this prisoner, simple as it is, would have utterly 
failed to refute. But there is no proof of it-there 
has been no evidence offered upon that point. Not a 
witness has been placed upon the stand who has told 
you that Fuchs peeled the flesh off this man-not one. 
Bear in mind that I have no desire that you should 
disregard these horrible features of the case if they 
throw any light upon -what transpired before or at the 
very moment of the killing. For instance, if it were a 
vital element in this case that the prisoner had con- 
cealed the body, which I do not think it is, then, if the 
evidence of mutilation tended to confirm that theory, 
it would then be proper, of course, for you to con- 
sider whether the disposition of the body, which he 
did finally make, was in keeping with any theory of 
concealment. It v&ould then be for you to determine 
whether the taking of a man's head in a basket on 
one's arm and throwing it in a place of public resort 
was such an incident as was calculated to conceal the 
death of that man. Then it would be for you to say 
how consistent with that motive was the carrying of a 
special small part of that body to an open vacant lot, 
traveled over by the public, or accessible to the travel 
of the public, and depositing that small portion 
within the open surface of that field, and thereby 
publishing that something had been done there to 
any person who might pass that way upon any day 
subsequent to this transaction. But, gentlemen, it 
seems to me that these efforts at concealment, to 
which I shall refer again, have nothing to do with 
the determination by you of what the facts were in 
this case, except as they show an insane disposition of 
the body. 56 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
Gentlemen, a word to you in relation to the time 
which I shall spend in developing this case to you. I 
think you will all appreciate the difficulties with which 
a lawyer must find himself overwhelmed, who, anxious 
for the best interests of his client in a capital case, 
wishes to omit nothing which may seem material to 
his defense, and at the same time to say nothing 
which shall needlessly prejudice it. The most that I 
can ask of you is your kind indulgence while I shall 
do what seems to me to be my duty to this man, and, 
at the same time, exercise good faith with you in the 
time during which I shall detain your attention. 
Now there are a variety of degrees of crime which 
may be found to have been committed in this trans- 
action, according as you shall interpret, and find the 
fact to be with reference to, the conduct of this pris- 
oner. It seems to me, however, at the outset, that you 
cannot possibly find in it any deliberation, such as the 
law requires to constitute murder in the first degree. 
Perhaps you are not aware that we have had some 
legislation within the last two or three years in refer- 
ence to this question of "deliberation." The law, as 
it stood in 1862 (I think I can cite these statutes from 
memory, as well as to take your time in finding the 
text, and of course if there is any doubt about it, I 
shall be corrected by the district attorney)-the law 
as it stood in 1862 was, that if there was a premedi- 
tated design to kill, then the killing was murder in 
the first degree. By the interpretations which the 
courts had put upon that statute, it was found that 
convictions of this capital offense were almost impos- 
sible to be obtained, and therefore the legislature 
thought it wise to change the status of crime in that FUCHS ADDRESS. 
57 
regard, and to add to premeditated the word deliber- 
ate, so that the capital punishments of persons killing 
should be confined to those cases in which there was a 
manifest positive act of deliberation-not at the in- 
stant, as the decisions had been before, but some well- 
defined previous act of design. Now, I had prepared 
a line of argument upon this point, but I have no hesi- 
tation in believing that the court will charge you in 
that regard substantially as was charged in the Wal- 
worth case by Mr. Justice Noah Davis, who said:- 
" It might have been open to hold that an inten- 
tional murder with actual malice was justly within 
these words (deliberate and premeditated design to 
effect death), if there were not divers other expres- 
sions in the statute which would preclude a court from 
adopting that view of the effect of the law. And in 
creating the second degree the legislature have there- 
fore said, ' such killing, unless it be murder in the first 
degree, or manslaughter, or excusable or justifiable 
homicide, as hereinafter provided, shall be murder in 
the second degree when perpetrated intentionally, but 
without deliberation or intention.' The effect of this 
provision, in my judgment, is that it becomes the 
duty of the court to instruct you that the deliberation 
and premeditation required to constitute murder in 
the first degree is something quite different from the 
actual presence of the intention formed at the in- 
stant of the striking of the blow or the firing of the 
shot. It is essential that it should appear in a case 
where the offense charged is murder in the first 
degree under this statute, that there was sorrie actual 
pre-deliberation and premeditation in and upon the 
mind of the accused in respect to the subject-matter 58 
EXONEIL i TIYE IN SANI T Y. 
of the offense before the actual occurrence of the act 
which is alleged to be the crime." 
Now, the defense in this case claim that upon three 
considerations you must acquit the prisoner, providing 
that you find similarly with them as to the occur- 
rences taking place at the time of the killing. 
In the first place, if this killing were done upon 
finding the deceased in criminal assault upon the 
prisoner's wife, then he was justified in pursuing 
every remedy which was open to him, even to killing 
the man, in order to prevent that object being accom- 
plished at any stage of its progress. I think you will 
not be called upon to split hairs here upon the con- 
sideration of whether any act of criminal assault upon 
this wife had been accomplished in this case or not, 
because the guardianship and protection which is 
thrown about a man under such circumstances re- 
gards with as great a horror the putting upon a man 
of spurious issue as it does the defense even of the 
chastity of his wife. And in this connection, let me 
say that no matter what the character of this woman 
had been-no matter how much below those wifely 
attributes, which commend the honorable, intelligent, 
refined and cultivated man's wife to his kindly con- 
sideration and affection, the relation of wife to hus- 
band is protected in its lowest as well as in its highest 
sphere; nay, there is not a strumpet that plies her 
brazen career on the public streets at night whose 
person is not, by the law of the land, protected against 
violence ; so that if you find such, to have been the cir- 
cumstances of this case-that the prisoner was repel- 
ling an attack of that character upon the person of 
his wife, then I think the court will instruct you that FUCHS AWFFSS. 
59 
the killing was justifiable. Further than that, if you 
find that the prisoner's wife was insensible from 
liquor, or that she was in a condition incapable of 
giving assent to such a crime, then I think that the 
court will instruct you that the man who was having 
connection with her under such circumstances was 
committing a crime under section twenty-three of the 
statute, which provides for those cases which under 
English statutes amount to rape, by saying, that they 
shall be "connections had with persons incapable of 
giving their assent," and that the term of imprison- 
ment shall be no less than ten years, thus constituting 
it a felony. 
And, gentlemen, the law is explicit that any efforts 
necessary to be made by any man for the prevention 
of a felony, even to taking life, constitute such kill- 
ing justifiable homicide. 
Nor is the law wanting in another principle which, 
applied to this case, would constitute it, if not justi- 
fiable, excusable homicide. The books are full of de- 
cisions and the statute is explicit upon this question 
of excusable homicide. The words of the statute, 
which I need not cite here, are, in substance, that 
where a man kills another by accident or misfortune, 
upon sufficient provocation, it will be excusable- 
wholly excusable. And that is founded upon a prin- 
ciple of law, or of public policy, which I think will 
commend itself to your favor. There is no statute law 
in our land against the crime which (if you believe 
the theory of this defense) you will find to have been 
in the act of commission by the deceased on this occa- 
sion. Now, that is an exceptional fact in the history 
of all civilization-it is an exceptional fact. And by 60 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
your kind permission I will call your attention to a 
summary of the law's of different nations, in that 
regard, made by Professor Dimitry in the Sickles 
Casfc, and which was submitted to the court on that 
trial. 
"Among the Jews, by the law of God, the adul- 
terer and adulteress were both stoned to death. In 
Greece Lycurgus decreed that adultery should be pun- 
ished the same as murder. The Saxons, by their law, 
burned the adulteress to death and over her ashes 
reared the gibbet on which the adulterer was hung. 
In England, in the reign of Alfred, the adulteress was 
seized and stripped to the waist, driven away from her 
husband's house, and in the presence of all her rela- 
tions scourged from tithe to tithe until death ensued, 
while the adulterer was strung up to the next tree. 
In France, under the laws of Louis the Debonnaire, 
both parties suffered capital punishment. Constan- 
tine inflicted capital punishment upon adulterers of 
both sexes. Spanish laws deprived the adulterer of 
that through which he had violated the laws of so- 
ciety and the sanctity of the marriage-bed. In Portu- 
gal the adulterer was burned to death with the adul- 
teress, but if the husband chose to save his wife from 
this fearful chastisement, she was set free with a fine." 
From this, gentlemen, you will observe how the 
history of civilization discloses the rigid views which 
men have at all times entertained of the commission of 
this hateful crime, and now, can you ask me how it is 
that upon the statute books of our commonwealth no 
law punishing it is found ? 
Why, gentlemen, it is the highest commentary 
upon the intelligence and moral insight of our people, FUCHS ADDRESS. 
61 
and the due administration of justice in our land, 
which could possibly be made. The objections to be 
urged against any express provisions upon the subject 
are, I think, obvious to you. They opened the door 
for the defeat of justice by the apprehension and trial 
of persons engaged in relations to each other which 
were especially unsusceptible of proof ; and the mak- 
ers of our law, when they came to consider the pro- 
priety of introducing them upon our statute-books, 
with an eye to these manifest objections said, "Why, 
we will leave that question to the decision of an intel- 
ligent jury of the vicinage, whenever and wherever it 
shall come to their attention, and we will leave them 
to make up the record (which they have never evaded 
in any capital case hitherto), that the punishment 
awaiting a man in these circumstances is not less sure 
of being meted out to him than if it were written in 
letters of gold all over the statutes of our land." 
Because, gentlemen, there never has yet been a 
case where a jury of twelve men, taken at random 
from any great municipality, have been satisfied that 
the sanctity of the marriage tie wras being violated by 
the man slain at the time of killing when they have 
not nobly risen to the emergency which beset the 
slayer and given him a free acquittal at their hands. 
And I say to you, gentlemen, that, from the moment 
you shall determine what the facts are in this case, there 
will not be an instant of time thereafter when this 
poor laborer shall not walk free in this land as the 
righteous instrument of a deserving punishment. I 
have ho desire to take up your time in the consider- 
ation of authorities which I have at hand. In this 
regard the policy of the law has always been to recog- 62 
EXON ERA TIVE IN SAN IT Y. 
nize such a provocation as, in cases of a discovery 
flagrante delictu or in the very act of crime, sufficient 
to justify even a fatal assault upon the aggressor. It 
has always been considered that in the presence of 
these peculiar circumstances the frailty of human 
nature is so great that one cannot be expected to con- 
trol his acts or to resist the natural manly impulses of 
every human being so situated. 
Now, gentlemen, I have very briefly, and very im- 
perfectly, as you have observed, brought to your atten- 
tion what seemed to me to be the leading principles 
of law which pertain to this case. There are some 
minor elements which we have covered in our " re- 
quests to charge " which have been presented to the 
court, and there is only this further consideration 
of that nature which I desire to present to you before 
I undertake to examine what the facts were in this 
case. And that consideration is : that no murder can 
possibly be committed without the person committing 
it shall be at the time in the possession of a sound 
mind. 
And this opens up for our discussion a vast and 
uncertain field of exploration, into which I do not pro- 
pose to carry you at any great length. Need I suggest 
to you, however, in view of the delicate arrangement 
of the nervous system, of which the brain is the head 
and motor, how very marvelous it is that any one of 
us should be able to control it-to hold it in hand, 
apply it to the varied relations of life, and make it our 
servant in the administration of our duties as citizens, 
as husbands, as fathers, and as business men. Why, 
gentlemen, when we consider that the humuan brain, 
which in the case of Cuvier weighed four pounds, gives FUCHS ADDRESS. 
63 
out branches from the brain cavity which, traversing 
the spinal column, ramifies our entire physical struc- 
ture, until it reaches its farthest parts in such atten- 
uated structure that twenty-five thousand of its finest 
fibers lying in juxtaposition make up but the narrow 
span of one inch, each narrowest fiber of which is 
still in instantaneous readiness to transmit to its par- 
ent, the brain, the slightest possible sensation received 
by it from the outer wosld, need I suggest to you what 
a delicate machine we are considering, or how wonder- 
ful, how surpassingly wonderful it is that it should 
keep its regularity for sixty years and report with 
punctilious exactness, and at intervals of time of less 
than the thousandth part of a second, the conditions of 
temperature, and danger which continually environ us. 
Need I suggest to you the intimate relation of the 
heart-so long supposed to be the seat of all human 
passion-to this machine ; the heart, which is the 
second of the great primary developments of our phys- 
ical structure. Let me presume that these sugges- 
tions are unnecessary, and that it will be sufficient to 
call your attention to the impossibility of the circum- 
stances of this case being suddenly confronted by any 
ope without its weakening, and in some cases de- 
stroying entirely, that governing principle of human 
reason, which is all that causes you or I to differ from 
the beasts of the field. So I shall ask you to con- 
sider whether, if you believe this pivotal fact of this 
case, it was possible that this man Fuchs, who is not 
of the highest order of intelligence certainly, was in 
the possession of a sound mind when he did whatever 
may have been done in this case. And if you shall 
find that he was not, you will have discovered lacking 64 
EXON ERA TIVE INSANIT Y. 
an important element of murder, as much so as the 
corpus delicti itself-just as much so as the dead and 
mutilated body of Simmons himself; a cardinal ele- 
ment of the crime, to be found by you beyond a rea- 
sonable doubt, before you can consign this prisoner to 
the scaffold. And upon that subject I call your at- 
tention to a decision in our court of appeals, u'The 
People v. Wagner," in which is stated the advanced 
ground which our highest court has taken in relation 
to this element of murder. As I read it from the 
syllabus the doctrine is that ''when the evidence in 
a criminal case raises the question of insanity, the 
jury must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that 
the prisoner was sane when he committed the act." 
Now, perhaps, I ought to suggest to you that in- 
sanity is very commonly regarded as a wild, furious, 
raving condition of the mind, and that it is not 
thought by common people, who frequently and curs- 
orily discuss the subject, that insanity means simply 
without mind, or without soundness. It is not neces- 
sary that a man should commit any untoward act, or 
should remain in an unsound condition more than a 
brief time, in order that he should be without a sound 
mind, which is a material element of all crime,-an 
element, it is true, always presumably present; but if 
from any evidence, however slight, the question is 
raised in your mind, then it becomes proper and 
necessary for your consideration, and it must be passed 
upon by you with the gravest scrutiny-a scrutiny to 
be qualified and modified by the privilege I have 
already suggested to which the prisoner is entitled, of 
the advantage of any reasonable doubt you may enter- 
tain upon any and every essential element of guilt. FUCHS ADDRESS. 
65 
Now I ought, in frankness to you, as well, as to the 
court, to say that this position, as taken by our court 
of appeals, as to a reasonable doubt in the case I have 
cited, was a doubt as to whether the prisoner at the 
time had a conscious power, had a consciousness of 
right and wrong, and that that was the test of his in- 
sanity. But there are many decisions below which 
establish irrefutably the doctrine that this old right- 
and-wrong test of insanity is a patent absurdity, and 
the moment you will consider it yourself as intelli- 
gent men, you will observe that it must be so. For 
many lunatics have a distinct conception of right and 
wrong, and understand perfectly well themselves all 
the moral considerations involved in* an act of turpi- 
tude, and yet find themselves overwhelmed with such 
a disturbed mental balance that they cannot control 
and shape their acts in conformity with a right 
standard. 
And so the court held in the case.of the People v. 
Cole. Judge Hogeboom held that a man must have, 
in addition to this intellectual grasping of the ques- 
tion of right and wrong-in addition to this dim in- 
timation of what the proper thing was to do, and of 
the consciousness that something wrong was being 
done-the power to control his own acts ; not by any 
means (and I do not want to mislead you at any 
point of this case), not by any means that he should 
have the calm possession of his faculties-not at all,- 
but that he should have intellect sufficient to control 
his motives in that regard-to carry into effect his in- 
tellectual conception ; in other words, that he should 
have, besides the machinery of intellectual conception, 
the power to control the machinery-that he must 66 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
have; and concerning that quality of sanity Judge 
Hogeboom said in his charge to the jury, "If you 
have any doubt about that power he is entitled to it." 
And further, in that case was also decided the 
question of how much time must elapse of this dis- 
connected state of mind before the exemption by 
reason of unsoundness can intervene. 
The jury in this case had gone out (Cole had killed 
the adulterer long after the event of the adultery), and 
returned for instructions, and retired again, and on re- 
turning a second time for instructions reported to the 
presiding justice the impediment to a verdict, the fore- 
man saying: " We find the prisoner sane at the moment 
before he committed this act, we find him sane the 
moment after he committed the act, but we are in 
doubt of his sanity at the time of the act;" and the 
court instructed them that they must give the prisoner 
the benefit of that doubt, and they did so, and ac- 
quitted him. 
I now approach the consideration of what seem 
to me to be the facts in this case, and I think, to start 
with, that you will find in these circumstances ample 
evidence that nothing took place on that eventful 
night which was actuated by any other motive than 
that suggested by the prisoner himself. Why, when 
the district-attorney closed his case, when all these 
detectives had exhibited themselves upon the stand 
with such success as you saw, if I had asked any one 
of you twelve men what it was that actuated Fuchs in 
the killing of this man Simmons, what could you 
have said to me ? 
The evidence then was at about this stage. It had 
been proven that the body of Simmons-the disinte- FUCHS ADDRESS. 
67 
grated parts of it-had been found at the ship-yard ; 
another part in the meadow ; more of it in the stove ; 
some of it in the cellar ; and part of it in boxes in the 
house-had been identified. The occupants of that 
house were Fuchs, the prisoner, his wife and a little 
girl. It had also been proven that the party deceased 
was on friendly terms with the prisoner, was his benefac- 
tor, was his employer, and in that sense a benefactor 
to him ; was the man upon whom Fuchs depended for 
a living; had that very day, so late as live and one- 
half o'clock in the afternoon, drank in a-friendly way 
with him at his own-Simmons'-invitation ; and then 
it was proven that the articles (which I think were 
identified without any doubt as belonging to Sim.; 
mons) had been found in the house locked up in a 
drawer, the only drawer in the house locked, and the 
key in possession, not of Fuchs, on that occasion, for 
he had then been arrested^ but of Mrs. Fuchs, and in 
the same drawer the liquor which poor Fuchs was* in 
the habit of keeping away from his wife by reason of 
her habits ; and the liquor accounts for the drawer 
and the lock on it. I think you must have been struck 
very forcibly by the importance which was attempted 
to be given to that bit of evidence by the sharp de- 
tective Corwin. I have never seen a person on the wit- 
ness stand who labored heavier, who exerted himself 
to a greater degree to get that cloth in there, probably 
all the cloth in the house, top of the keys ; he labored 
heavily at it, and the only thing he was sure about in 
this whole transaction, you will remember, wTas that 
the newspaper which was covered over the key was 
a printed newspaper. I believe that was the only 
question which I asked Corwin that he was positive 68 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
of. He was positive, lie said, that that newspaper was 
a printed newspaper. Now he tried to get it there 
but I don't think he did. It is suggested by my asso- 
ciate that it was Short who made that endeavor. I 
don't care which detective it was. It is an example 
worthy of your attention of the manner of looking at 
things which detectives bring to the stand. 
Now you will judge human nature as you see it in 
the street, and deal with it in your business, and as 
you find it in social circles. I wanted no other men my- 
self on this jury, and you did not fail to observe that 
he was making every point he could against this poor 
man, and was even willing to throw his surmises into 
the scale against him. And yet this evidence was of 
no importance if my view of the case is right; because 
I may as well say to you here that if the disposition of 
this body and the secretion of these things, were 
necessary to make up a circumstantial case of killing 
they would be important, but in the absence of that 
necessity they have no particular significance, for in 
this case the killing is acknowledged. 
Now, who was this man Fuchs? for when we are 
considering whether a man committed such a horrid 
crime as murder, we are justified, I think, in inquiring 
as to what manner of man he is. Indeed, we shall, as 
fair men, look to the evidence in the first instance 
mainly to discover whether his habits of life, and, so 
far as we may be able to ascertain, his manly or moral 
constitution were such as would naturally lead us to 
expect this fearful crime of murder from him. Who, 
then, was he ? 
He was an Alsatian peasant by birth ; had acquired 
an honest trade and had pursued it, as one of the wit- FUCHS ADDFESS. 
69 
nesses who were sprung upon us with, such remarkable 
stage-effect at a certain period, of this case, informs us, 
"of very good habits, regular in his work in the old coun- 
try." lie came to this country, sought employment at 
once, obtained it. He worked four years here. We 
have thrown open the door of character, a door which 
was shut to the prosecution before we opened it, as the 
court will instruct you, and we have challenged them 
to ransack the history of this poor, humble and ignorant 
mechanic, from the moment of his arrival here at the 
dock in New York to this day, and to bring forth what 
they could find most odious against him from the 
slums and sewers of crimes in these two great 
cities. And here, perhaps, as well as elsewhere, lest I 
forget it, I mny call your attention to the method of 
examination pursued by the district-attorney when this 
poor man went on the stand. At a certain stage of the 
examination, you remember, he asked him in a loud 
voice whether he knew two such men as Leopold Am- 
bruster and another one named Kuster; that was his 
first question at this stage. Then he asked him for the 
names of two men whom Fuchs knew. Then followed 
the question, "Now did you kill a man there abroad 
somewhere'?" Well, what was the rationale of this 
question, and what would suggest itself to a sagacious 
man's mind ? He knew that the moment he presented 
the names of two men whom Fuchs had known abroad 
he could hold them in terror over him at the next 
question, so that he should not dare to deny any act 
which he had done in that country. It was a marvel- 
ously ingenious examination. But you saw the effect 
of it upon poor Fuchs. Gentlemen, I would be willing 
to risk this case upon the question of whether you be- 70 
EXON ERA TIVE INSANITY. 
lieved that was genuine indignation which Fuchs ex- 
pressed when he rose, and, with such poor vehemence 
as his scant knowledge of the English language per- 
mitted him, repelled the vile imputation upon his 
former life. Was that honest surprise? was that just 
indignation, or was it simulation at the hands of this 
ignorant man here? If it was not simulation it estab- 
lishes to your complete satisfaction, that there was 
nothing in this prisoner's career before he came to this 
country, that he does not unblushingly tell you ; and 
it is further ratified by the frank manner in which this 
poor fellow confesses that he loved a girl there, had 
entered into marital relations with her, a child was 
born, he came here, sent her money to follow him, 
when he heard from one of these very witnesses that 
the poor girl and child were dead, and then contracted 
this unfortunate alliance with this miserable woman 
which has brought him into court to answer for his 
life. 
Now, he was employed at Jones & Henry's, a shop 
where a large number of hands are employed. My 
associate called on a great number of them and sub- 
poenaed such of them as he thought were most familiar 
with Fuchs. There were at least ten detectives in this 
case, at least the whole force was on. As Mr. Corwin 
said : " They were all on after the head was found "- 
and you will observe that the detectives themselves 
never dreamed of this case until after the head was 
found-a clue quite calculated to incite the ingenious 
inquiries of even a dull set of men. And I suppose 
that if the head had not been so far from the body- 
about a mile away-they would have suggested the 
same ingenious theory of this murder which they have FUCHS ADD EESS. 
71 
of all the real murders which have taken place in this 
city for the last two years-that the man committed 
suicide. 
Now, I say to you, that if you find about this man's 
character or person the elements of a murderer-the 
man that you and I as good citizens fear on the public 
highway as attacking us at night in cur retirement, 
don't, by any manner of means, allow him to escape the 
just penalty of the law. But if, on the contrary, you 
find about him the characteristics up to the very time 
of this transaction of an honest, peaceable, hard-work- 
ing citizen of an humble calling, supporting a dissolute 
wife and her child, by his hard blows on the anvil or 
by the exercise of his strength in the humble duty of 
helper to Simmons; then, unless you find that his 
nature was changed in a moment, that all the charac- 
teristics of the fiend and the murderer ran riot through 
his brain in an instant of time, that the laws of human 
nature were reversed, that for the first time in the his- 
tory of mankind the benignant God had stooped to 
earth to create a murderer; then, gentlemen, give 
him that just consideration to which he is entitled 
by reason of the hitherto clean record of his 
life. Why, what higher certificate to your good 
opinion could we furnish this prisoner ? We teach our 
children at home, all of us, that a good character will 
be to them an unfailing tower of strength in any time 
of trial; that no matter how much riches they may 
have acquired, no matter how happily glory waits upon 
them, no matter how high they may rise in political 
place or honor, if they have not the solid foundation of 
a good character, it will avail them nothing. Why, if 
you were to decide what legacy you were to leave 
to any child of yours upon your dying bed, would you 72 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
choose long between leaving him a character rich with 
the fruitage of generous deeds and kindly charities, or 
piles of gold ? When the tempest comes upon a man ; 
when dire exigencies of life gather gloomily about him, 
when he finds himself confronted with sinister circum- 
stances which he is called upon to explain, when Im 
must establish some hypothesis of his life to present 
to his fellows who are to judge upon him, why what 
else can he do than to unfold the pages of his life to 
them, ask them to look kindly upon its errors, to ack- 
nowledge its merits, and to let it stand him in stead in 
their good opinion if it be found worthy. 
Gentlemen, I doubt very much whether any of these 
fellow-workmen of Fuchs could have been found in 
the whole shop who could have presented a fairer or 
cleaner record as a good citizen than he did. He was 
not gifted by nature with a remarkable intellect. Many 
a man owes a punctilious performance of his duties to 
his acute perception and recognition of what people 
will think of him ; but this poor man had no such 
index to start with through life. He is a very limited 
man in his knowledge, and knew nothing better than 
to go regularly to his work and back to his home and 
to harbor, in his uncultured yet good- hear ted way, this 
miserable wife and her child; "Oh!" but says the 
district-attorney to his fellow-workmen who testified to 
his uniform good conduct and orderly behavior, "you 
only knew him about in the shop." Well, gentlemen, 
there is where he spent ten hours in the day-and the 
rest at home. Very true ; that is all we could show 
about him. He had no boon companions in the lager- 
beer saloon. He did not traverse the ways of this city 
by night in doubtful places. He w^ at home. Why FUCHS SUU FUSS. 
73 
do you expect us to bring before you in sustaining the 
character of this man a record of brilliant, heroic deeds 
-of signal moral courage? No, you do not. You 
will judge him fairly, in that regard, I am sure, and 
looking at his simple record as we have disclosed it to 
you, you will set it down in your memories not to be 
twisted therefrom by any sophistries or ingenuity of 
the district-attorney, that the prisoner is a man of good 
moral character, of good repute among his fellows ; oc- 
cupying an humble station, but true to his calling at 
every moment of his life, true up to the very hour 
when he did this deed. 
I confess, gentlemen, to some degree of curiosity to 
hear what; theory will be advanced by the prosecution 
as to any sufficiently heinous motive which could have 
changed this man's character so suddenly. Some evi- 
dence has been introduced herein relation to Simmons's 
watch ; but I cannot understand how any flimsy struct- 
ure of cupidity can be dignified by any skill of argu- 
ment into a sufficient incitement to outweigh the whole 
tenor of this man's life, and cause him to kill the man 
on whom he depended £ar employment. Why, every 
act of this eventful evening was proposed and carried 
out by Simmons. It was he who asked Fuchs to drink. 
He came to the house of Fuchs without an invitation, and 
one remark that Fuchs made on his cross-examination, 
throws a great deal of light upon this feature of the 
case. The watch was exhibited here, and Fuchs was 
asked when he got that watch. Now did he hesitate 
to tell you about that ? Not in the least. He said he 
snatchedit from the vest as he was putting it in the tire. 
Now I want you to consider that a moment. What 
was the man doing ? was he not throwing away ttie 74 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
very object of the murder? Even the imagination of 
the district attorney and his ability to appropriate 
points of testimony to his purpose will not enable him 
to destroy the naturalness of this act. He snatched it 
from the vest as he was putting it in the fire. He was 
actually throwing the vest in the fire with the watch in 
it and happening to see it, and for the first time think- 
ing of it, he snatchedit and preserved it, and there is 
no evidence that any of the material which Simmons 
had about him, even to that rusty old knife and rule, 
which cofuld easily have been burned up if Fuchs de- 
sired to avoid detection, was not carefully preserved. 
Nay ! lest I forget it, let me in this connection call your 
attention to another instance in this case which I think 
reflects with most powerful effect upon what manner 
of man this murderer was. You remember that it is in 
evidence that he went to Jones Saturday night and 
got two dollars, and it is also in evidence that there was 
some three or four dollars at that very time in Simmons' s 
pocket-book-some of it silver coin, the most marketa- 
ble of all commodities. Now, when this man went 
to Jones, having just paid his $ent and being exhausted 
of money (which reminds me that he was always 
prompt in the payment of his rent); when he went down 
there and in an abject position of humility almost beg- 
ged for the bread to keep him through the next week- 
the money of William Simmons lay in his drawer un- 
touched. All the money, and more than the money, he 
cringingly asked for on that eventful night was there 
for the having. I say to you, gentlemen, that this action 
alone on the part of poor Fuchs, ignorant, unfortunate, 
standing before you to-day in the felon's dock pleading 
for his unhappy life, reflects a luster upon this whole FUCHS ADDRESS. 
75 
transaction which crowns this humble mechanic with al- 
most an heroic glory. The money of Simmons, who was 
the spoiler of his marriage-bed, who had violated the 
hospitality of his hearth-stone and befouled the pri- 
vacy of his home, and broken asunder his marriage- 
ties, no matter how valuable they were, was not to be 
touched in the direst extremity, nor was a single thing 
that Simmons had. Is there then any room left for 
the theory that this prisoner murdered Simmons for 
the few articles which it is proved he had about him ? 
It seems to me that there cannot be. 
But let us pursue these relations as fast as we may. 
On Thursday night, Fuchs, having seen Simmons in 
the afternoon and at his request having taken a drink 
with him, was sitting in this little room twelve by 
thirteen feet, by the table. A knock came at the door, 
which was opened immediately, and in walked Sim- 
mons, whom he had left two or three hours before on 
the street. The usual conversation took place, proba- 
bly, incident to an arrival in a humble home of that 
character. And I want to ask you right here to con- 
tinue to bear in mind, and especially during the argu- 
ment of the district attorney, that this poor man is to be 
judged with his mean surroundings and with this drink- 
ing of beer, and his rough, uncouth manners, not as 
you would judge a man of refinement, of a sensitive 
nature and of culture. He is evidently in his manner 
and habit of living about as humble a man and lives in 
about as rough a way as falls to the lot of most men. 
Indeed, you must see yourselves that this is a necessary 
incident of the wages he receives, and it is proper that 
you should bear that in mind in considering these re- 
lations. 76 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
Well, Simmons comes in. Some little familiarities 
passed between Simmons and the prisoner5 s wife ; what 
they were we don't know, probably the ordinary salu- 
tations. A little conversation followed which Fuchs 
says he did not understand. Then Simmons exhibits 
a doll he had brought for the little girl. Now Sim- 
mons was a man of family, with a wife and children, 
yet none of them had been living with him during the 
recollection of any of these witnesses. Of course 
there is nothing criminal in your or my taking to 
the residence of a man occupying an inferior station 
in life to ourselves, a doll for his child or the child of 
his wife, but it must throw what light it will upon this 
transaction; and if you shall find in that little incident 
any indication of an object, remote or otherwise, to be 
gained by Simmons, the prisoner is entitled to the 
full benefit of whatever inference you may draw from 
that fact. Simmons produces the doll, the little girl is 
brought and Fuchs is sent for beer to celebrate the 
event. Now if this were a death-trap which Simmons 
was being led into we maintain that liquor would have 
been brought instead of beer. The beverage furnished 
was a drink of which Fuchs and Simmons probably 
consumed five quarts a day. It is astonishing the 
amount of beer that foreigners will consume at their 
labor. They drink it as water. Then they go to the 
drawer and Fuchs brings out a bottle which was care- 
fully locked from his wife and they have one drink all 
around. Further along in the evening, the little girl 
having gone to bed, Simmons proposes that they have 
some more beer at his expense. He produces the 
money, Fuchs takes it and goes for the beer. It is his 
employer who speaks, and he is entitled to some defer- FUCHS ADDRESS. 
77 
ence. Fuchs is detained more or less, we know not 
how long. He says twenty or twenty-live minutes, and 
I believe there is no evidence to contradict that. He 
says he was at the lager-beer saloon ten minutes and 
when he came back he heard no voices, and peeking 
through the blinds he saw no one above the level of the 
window-sill. Now there was a lounge in the room and 
if any one had been on that lounge it could have been 
observed from the window ; so that a survey of the 
apartment satisfied him that there was no one standing 
in the room, no one sitting in the chair, and no one 
upon the lounge ; and the only other place where they 
could have been to be out of sight from the window, 
was upon the floor, and upon opening the door he 
found the deceased upon the floor with his wife. 
4 
Now I cannot undertake to analyze the motives or 
the passions which arise in a man's soul upon contem- 
plating such a sight, but I can unhesitatingly declare 
to you that the theory which I have understood to be 
suggested or prompted by the district attorney, that 
some unpleasant relations between Fuchs and his wife 
might have mitigated his feelings in such a situation is 
contrary to every dictate of divine, law and every ex- 
perience of humanity the world over. It is contrary to 
any possible conception which any husband can enter- 
tain of the degree of indignity to his honor which he 
bus sustained, where a man has alienated from him 
that about his wife which is the inestimable pearl of 
her virtue. 
And if you find in this story of Fuchs some things 
which seem to be irregularities ; some things which an 
unlearned, ignorant man was obliged to say that he 
could not explain, or did not remember, or did not 78 
EXON ERA 71VE IN SA NIT Y. 
know about, I do not think you will allow those con- 
siderations to affect your consideration of his story 
any more than if you desired to enter a room contain- 
ing .some valuable treasure, and a person came to you 
with a key which he said he had tried and found to tit 
the lock ; and a third party should start up and say, 
" Why, that key never can fit the lock ; that cannot 
secure your entrance to the treasure: the lips are too 
long ; there is a knuckle on one lip, an abrasion on the 
other"-any more than you would hesitate to say to 
that man, " Stand aside-here is a man who has tried 
the key and found it to lit the lock." And if upon 
trial you found that it fitted the lock ; that its secret 
springs moved at the contact of the key, and you 
secured the treasure, you would treat with contempt 
the discussion of these minor irregularities, which had 
been profoundly argued by the third party who had 
intervened. 
So I say to you here, that if you find this story of 
Fuchs' true-if you find that it fits into the position 
of these parties-that it accords with their antecedents ; 
chat it is, in fine, the touch-stone which gathers to 
itself the whole history of this man during this trans' 
action ; that it accounts for his bewilderment as to 
what he did with these remains; that it reveals the 
instigation of the biow which he says he knows 
nothing about; that it caused him during the next 
week to vacillate to and fro-at one time desiring to 
expose the body so that all might see it, and at another 
overwhelmed with the consequences of what he had 
done, and desiring in a moment of human weakness to 
conceal it-why, you will not bother yourselves long 
in considering those minor features of the case which FUCHS ADDRESS. 
79 
can have no possible bearing upon the main issue 
which you are here to decide. 1 have heard of nothing 
more pathetic in a court of justice, nothing which de- 
lineated more exactly the true state of affairs in this 
case than that touching remark of Fuchs in answer to 
one question of the district attorney, when he said 
that the reason he did not know what he had done 
with some of the fragments of this body was that he 
was for some days "like a shadow on the wall." Gen- 
tlemen, have you faith enough in your mental con 
dition under such circumstances to feel sure that you 
would be of any more avail in regulating your affairs 
after such a transaction than " a shadow on the wall." 
1 know not what considerations the district attorney 
may present to you, entitled as he may suppose him- 
self to be to urge upon you any views of retribution 
which he may entertain. 1 know not whether he will 
cite to you the widow and children of William Sim- 
mons, whose death 1 as deeply deplore as he can, as 
demanding from their far-away home any vengeance 
which the law may be supposed to entertain towards 
criminals; but I have to say to you that the wife and 
children of William Simmons were widowed and or 
phaned long before the commission of the act for which 
this prisoner answers at the bar to-day. For that wife 
is already a widow and those children are already 
orphaned whose husband and whose father is in the 
hot pursuit of an alien love. From that household 
thenceforward is banished every ray of sunshine which 
this world can bring to it; from that peaceful fireside 
have departed all those elements which enter into and 
constitute the sacredness of home. Nothing more can 
be done, no other desolation can be added to it. It 80 
EXON ER A TIVE INSANIT Y. 
lies a ruined thing. It rests in the darkest shadow of 
despair-a mockery of its former self. It is blighted 
from the face of the earth. It has left about it no ele- 
ment of happiness. 
Now I think you will apprehend the difficulties the 
defense were under in this case when called upon to 
substantiate this fact and show to you what was trans- 
piring in that room when Fuchs re-entered it. That is 
a circumstance which rarely happens in our history 
that a man shall find his wife flagrante delicto, and it 
could happen, I think, only under just such circum- 
stances as are proven in this case, outside of the pris- 
oner's evidence. But we were conscious all the while, 
during the preparation of this case, that there was a 
little girl present at the time. She was detained at the 
hands of the prosecution. Some question has arisen 
as to whether she was accessible to us. However that 
may be, I believe there is no dispute that, as matter of 
fact, the only interview, we had with her was, as she 
herself testified, and that that interview was held 
under the lynx-eyed surveillance of a detective sent 
there by the district attorney to catch the defendant's! 
attorney in any attempt which they should make to 
manufacture this little girl into a valuable witness for 
the defense. You will, therefore, be obliged, in the 
consideration of her testimony, to banish from your 
minds any possible theory that it was concocted by 
the attorneys for the defense. Now, the district 
attorney said, as an excuse for not producing her (for 
it was obvious that she, being the only other witness 
and an intelligent child, ought to be produced as much 
in the interest of the public as for the prisoner) that 
he had understood that she was wholly unreliable in 
her testimony, and for that reason he thought she had FUCHS ADDRESS. 
81 
better not be introduced. That statement had no 
sooner fallen from his lips in his opening than I felt 
sure that if we could get that little girl on the stand, 
she would come into this case like a sunbeam from 
heaven and illuminate it with the exact truth. That was 
the occasion of my visit there, and I hope you will give 
me credit for not desiring to contaminate the little crea- 
ture with this case, unless it were necessary to defend 
some right of the prisoner. For I do not suppose that 
any one of you twelve men looked with greater reluc- 
tance upon the exhibition of that poor little girl called 
upon to testify to such degrading circumstances than we 
did. But, gentlemen, when there lay so near at hand 
water from the very freshest fountain of truth, was it 
not our duty to present it to you ? For whoever else 
in this case may be charged with duplicity or be cov- 
ered over with excuses, surely this little girl coming 
here in her child-like, artless way, and telling her sim- 
ple story of degradation, must be free from suspicion ; 
and of one thing you must be confident: that she 
meant to tell the truth. 
Now what did she say? One of the many disabil- 
ities which the defense have labored under has been 
our inability to procure any of the evidence upon this 
trial. Not a total inability, yet such as amounts prac- 
tically to our not procuring it. I shall be compelled, 
therefore, to rely here, as I have relied at all stages of 
my address, upon your recollection of the accuracy of 
what 1 shall state to you as the testimony in this case. 
1 have no desire to pervert, magnify, or reduce it, and 
what I shall say to you concerning the examination of 
this little girl must be either verified or gainsayed by 
your own individual recollection. 82 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
I called the little girl to the stand, asked her if she 
had seen me before, and she replied that she had. I 
asked her if she remembered my asking her some 
questions, and she said she did, and also testified that 
Mr. Short, the detective, was present. Now I might 
diverge here to comment upon that unfortunate state 
of the law, if there be such a state, which prevents the 
freest consultation by counsel for a prisoner with any 
person whom he regards as a necessary witness, un- 
restrained by the presence of any public official. From 
the moment the district attorney announced his aban- 
donment of this little girl as a witness, why should she 
not have been open to the freest consultation, even if 
we should find in her simple story a confirmation of 
the prisoner's evidence? 
I then asked her if she remembered this night; she 
said she did, and I then asked her " Where was your 
mother on that night ?" and do you remember her an- 
swer ? I think that from the moment it came to your 
ears you were settled in your convictions as to the true 
history of this case. " She was on the floor with Mr. 
Simmons." Now how did that come in the mind of this 
little girl. Here is a witness who has never lied to you. 
Here is a witness who is the nearest approach to the 
fountain of all truth that it is practicable for human 
agencies to employ. An innocent, pure-minded little 
girl. The circumstances of the interviews of counsel 
with her preclude all possibility that that remark 
emanated from them ; and the circumstances of he 
confinement apart from the prisoner precludes that 
possibility in that quarter. And then the district attor- 
ney, deceived in his opinion as to her power of telling 
the truth, took the little girl in hand and asked her FUCHS ADDRESS. 
83 
whether she did not say to somebody something about 
seeing Mr. Simmons on a chair when beer was brought, 
and she said that she did. She did what ? Why, she 
had said that to somebody. She replied Yes, and said 
so over, and over to any other question he asked, and 
the result of this examination certainly evinced that 
she had some confused idea of seeing Simmons in a 
chair at some part of the evening; and she further said 
that Fuchs hit him on the head when he was in the 
chair, and cut his head off when he was in the chair, or 
something of that nature, and that he fell on the lioor ; 
and after that, your recollection will certainly support 
me in saying that she said she got that story from the 
newspapers. Now, the only story that the newspapers 
had of this case was the story of the chair, so that it 
was possible for her to get that story from the newspa- 
pers. Further along the district attorney said to her, 
"■ Now, little girl, I want you to begin and tell this story 
exactly as it occurred, yourself and what was her re- 
ply ? Why, when called upon to state the story for 
herself, she answered exactly as she did under my ex- 
amination that " She came to the door of her room, that 
she found her mamma and Simmons on the floor ; that 
her papa came in and struck him with an ax and killed 
him." Now it is possible that this other testimony as 
to cutting the head off of Simmons in. a chair, related 
to a subsequent stage of this transaction, when Fuchs 
found it necessary to dispose of this body, and let me 
suggest to you here that there is not a particle of proof 
that this mutilation occurred at all until after killing- 
not the least particle. There was nothing found until 
two days after. And you are at liberty, therefore, to 
conclude that all that which forms the dramatic part of 84 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
this unhappy tragedy, which has permeated this com- 
munity with a very just sense of horror and has thrilled 
them with its brutality, happened when the party to this 
transaction was overwhelmed with the necessity of dis- 
membering this body in order to be rid of it; an infirm- 
ity common to human passion, and no more opprobri- 
ous or unusual as to the dispositon of the body than 
the course which was followed by Prof. Webster when 
he cut in pieces the body of Parkman, and consumed 
it in his chemical laboratory. 
So you are not to bring to the consideration of this 
transaction any of those repulsive features of the case, 
but are to consider them with an intelligent discrimi- 
nation as actuated by the policy of concealment which 
was adopted by Fuchs. Nor are you at liberty to con- 
sider them apart from the other facts of what I regard 
as an insane disposition of special parts of the body, and 
calculated to fasten in your minds indelibly the con- 
viction that this man, so recklessly disposing of this 
body, was a man with no reasonable apprehension of 
the crime he had committed, and pursuing no intelli- 
gent design to effect the secretion of these remains. 
In the case of Prof. Webster, my associate suggests 
that the court held, that if there was any proof that 
the blow he gave Parkman was struck in the heat of 
passion, and without design, that it must have been 
simple manslaughter, and this notwithstanding the 
efforts at concealment of the body which were made 
by Webster. 
I am now about to surrender this case to your de- 
liberation, and I do so with great confidence as to what 
your verdict will be, but with very grave distrust of 
the manner in which I have presented these facts to FUCHS ADDRESS. 
85 
your consideration. lam conscious that I have omitted 
to say many things which abler men than I would have 
thought of, and I am also conscious that I have said 
many things which more astute counsel would have 
left unsaid, and I say this with no affectation of 
humility before you, but overwhelmed with a sense of 
the importance of what even I may say, or not say, as 
affecting the destinies of this unfortunate man. 
Three thousand miles across the sea, an old man 
waits to hear your verdict. He has heard of the charge 
which has been presented against his son, and he has 
heard that he is to be tried in a free land before an 
unbiassed jury of free men. Let him not hear again 
that your verdict has belied his faith. Let him, I 
pray you, hear nothing less in the result than that it 
carries freedom to his boy. 
He has come before you and told his story of this 
unhappy event. He has unfolded to you the past his- 
tory of his life, and invited you to scrutinize it care- 
fully and to say what manner of testimony it bears 
concerning his real character. And, gentlemen, if you 
shall find in these outer circumstances of the case a 
foundation sufficiently strong to support the testi- 
mony which has been given you in relation to that 
last final act on Thursday night, why then, under the 
ruling of the court, and with the sanction and the ap- 
proving voice of every manly man in all this com- 
munity, you must say by your verdict to this man 
that the blow he struck was struck in defense of that 
which is recognized throughout the length and breadth 
of Christendom as the one priceless pearl which must 
be preserved intact, in order that the domestic institu- 
tions which surround and protect us shall be main 86 
EXONERATIVE INSANITY. 
tained inviolate. For, gentlemen of the jury, there is 
no institution known to our modern civilization 
which will survive longer the years which are to suc- 
ceed us, and which are to lighten and bless the future 
generations of this Republic than the sacred hearth- 
stone of "Home." It constitutes the very pith and 
core of our national government, and long after our 
temples of learning shall have crumbled into dust; 
long after these church-spires which point towards 
heaven from every lofty hill and smiling valley all 
over this great continent, shall have been supplanted 
by the less pretentious symbols of a purer faith ; long 
after even these halls of jurisprudence which are the 
sustaining glory of our age shall have given place to 
higher conceptions of truth and justice, shall this 
humble institution of Home remain intact as a part of 
our existence. See to it, gentlemen, that it lose no 
element of strength by your decision in this case to- 
day. See to it that you plant about it the adamantine 
barrier of your verdict, across which if any libertine 
walk, he shall walk to his death. See to it, that, re- 
strained by no fear of public opinion, strong in the 
rectitude of your own honest convictions, rewarded by 
your own self-respect, which is of greater value than 
the unthinking applause of multitudes, you shall give 
to this poor man that justice to which the law of the 
land and his great injury entitle him. See to it that 
you let it go forth as the verdict of an untrammeled 
jury sitting in an enlightened age, and under the 
benign influences of our free institutions, that the law 
and the jury recognize no distinction in the absolute 
sanctity of a home, whether its threshold opens to the 
humble cabin of the poor or the lofty palace of the rich. 87 
While this work is going through the press the papers announce 
the death of Fuchs, and that, upon an autopsy held at the Auburn 
Insane Asylum, his brain was found to be seriously diseased. 
The following reply to a letter of inquiry addressed to the superin- 
tendent of the asylum is of interest. 
State Asylum for Insane Criminals, 
Auburn, N. Y., July 29, 1882. 
John A. Taylor, Esq., 
Dear Sir: 
In reply to yours of 28th July, I would say that Andreas Fuchs 
was committed to this asylum, from Auburn prison, November 30, 1878. 
The certificate of the prison physician stated that Fuchs had been con- 
fined in a ceil since his admission to prison, in April, 1876, " on account 
of his violent temper," also, "that he refused to be reasoned with," 
and "had no sense of moral responsibility." Further, that he had 
" various delusions "-the chief one being that he was to be pardoned 
on Christmas of that year. On admission I found him to be suffering 
from well-marked chronic mania, with delusions and also fixed halluci- 
nations of sight and hearing, He frequently complained that the assist- 
ant physician and the attendants passed the night at his room door, 
calling him names and making faces at him; also that he heard the 
voices of the assistant physician's brother and sister over his head at 
night. Occasionally he would draw crude caricatures of the imaginary 
persons who annoyed him. He was homicidal toward those about 
whom he entertained delusions, and would frequently threaten to kill 
them. He resented the idea that he was insane, and often demanded to 
be sent back to prison. I doubt if he ever realized that he was sentenced 
for life. Upto the time of his death, which occurred on the 5th inst., 
he insisted that he was notill, and, although too feeble to raise himself 
in bed, he would say, "Me no sick, me feela goot." He never referred 
to his crime nor to his wife or child. 
The immediate cause of his death was consumption of the lungs. In 
addition to this, the autopsy revealed well-marked indications of chronic 
organic disease of the membranes surrounding the brain, as well as of 
the structure of the organ itself. 
The history of the case, including the condition of the brain as dis- 
closed by the post-mortem examination, in my judgment, warrants the 
presumption that Fuchs was insane at the time he committed the hom- 
icide. 
Trusting I have covered the ground of your inquiry, I am, 
Respectfully yours, 
CARLOS F. MAC DONALD, 
Med. Sup't.