Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1882 — GATEAU'S SENTENCE. [ARTICLE]

GATEAU'S SENTENCE.

The wretch Guiteau was brought face to face with his doom, last Saturday, when Judge Coe over-ruled his counsel’s motion for a new trial, and pronouncad sentence upon the assassin as follows: You have been convicted of a crime so terrible In its circumstances and 60 farreaching in Its results, that it has drawn upon you the hoiror ol the whole world and the execrations of your countrymen. The excitement produced by such an offense made it no easy task to secure for you a fair and impartial trial, but you have had the power of the United States treasury and of the government in your service to protect your person from violence and to procure evidence from all parts of the country. You have had as fair and impartial ajury as ever assembled in a court of justice. You have been defended by counsel with a zeal and devotion that merit the highest eoominm, and I certainly have done my best to secure a lair presentation of your defense. Notwithstanding all this, you have been found guilty. It would have been a comfort to many people, if the verdict of the jury had established the fact that your act was that of an irresponsible man. It would have left the satisfying belief that the crime ot political assassination was something entirely foreign to the institutions and civilization of our oountry. But the result has denied them that comfort. The country will accept it as a fact, that that crime can be committed and the cocrt wil 1 have to deal with it with the highest penalty known to the criminal code, to serve as an example to others. Your career has been so extraordinary that the people might well, at times, have doubted your sanity, but one cannot but believe that when the crime was oommitted you thoroughly understood the nature of the crime and its consequences. (Guiteau—“l was acting as God’s man,”) and that you had amoral sense and conscience enough to recognize |the moral iniquity of such an act. (Prisoner—“ That’s a matter of opinion.”) Your own testimony shows that you recoiled with horor from the idea. You say that you prayed against it. You say that you thought it might be prevented. This shows that your conscience warned you against it, but by the wretched sophistry of your own mind you worked yourself up against the protest of your own conscience. What motive could have induced you to commit this act must be a matter ol conjecture. Probably men will think that some fanaticsm or morbid desire for selfexaltation was the inspiration for the act Your own testimony seems to controvert the theories of your counsel, who have maintained and thought honestly, I believe that you were driven against your will by an insane impulse. The testimony showed that you deliberately resolved to do it, and and that a deliberate and misguided will was the sole impulse. This may seem to be insanity to some persons, but law looks upon it as willful crime. You will have due opportunity of having any errors I may have committed during the oourse of the trial passed upon by the court in * banc, but meanwhile it is necessary for me to pronounce the sentence of law—that you be taken hence to the common jail of the district, frem whence you came, and there be kept in confinement, and on Friday, the 39th day of June, JBB2, you be taken to the place prepared for executionwithin the walls of said jail, and there, between the hours of 12 m. and 2p. m., you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and, .may the Lord have mercy on your soul.