Forensic Medicine [excerpt]

     The Czolgosz Case. The trial of the assassin of President McKinley brought out comparatively nothing of forensic importance. Both in the medical and lay press encomiums were showered upon the expedition and dignity with which the trial was conducted, and incidentally on the medical profession for not raising the plea of mental incapacity. As a lawyer expressed it, after the verdict was rendered, “the counsel appointed for Czolgosz was for the purpose of seeing that he did not escape anything that was coming his way.”
     As to the mental condition of Czolgosz but little has been published. J. W. Putnam, who examined him, stated that he was a young man in good health, twenty-eight years of age, and of steady habits. He was educated in the public schools until he was fifteen and was at intervals a wire-worker, blacksmith’s helper and farm hand. He had saved $400 in six years. At the age of twenty-one he became a convert to anarchism and a disbeliever, according to his own statement, in religion, government, law, God and marriage. He did not at the time of his examination [254][255] sham insanity, and, while he refused to discuss his crime with his lawyers, he did discuss it with others. In appearance he was more intelligent than the average murderer. So far as the meager data at hand show, there was nothing that would lead one to think that Czolgosz was insane, nor did there seem to be any special signs of degeneracy, though he probably belonged to the latter class.
     The assassination of President McKinley brought out numerous articles, notably one by C. K. Mills, on “Political Assassins.”* He divides political assassins into four classes: (1) Sane conspirators; (2) assassins clearly recognizable as insane; (3) degenerates who are not insane; (4) degenerates of doubtful sanity.
     The weight of evidence seems to be in favor of the view that Czolgosz was an anarchist who was not insane, but who presented a certain degenerate type common to the class.