Colorful History In Old City Hall
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In his June 17 Style architecture review "Winning on Appeal," Philip Kennicott could have mentioned what were arguably the three most colorful trials held in the second-floor courtrooms of the Old City Hall, rededicated recently as the new home of the District Court of Appeals.
In 1856, Rep. Philemon Herbert (D-Calif.) fatally shot an Irish American waiter, Thomas Keating, at the Willard Hotel during an argument about breakfast service. He was acquitted in two trials, the first for murder and the second for manslaughter. The outcome inflamed Washington's Irish American community, which saw ethnic bias in a lack of prosecutorial zeal.
In 1859, Rep. Dan Sickles (R-N.Y.) was tried for the murder of his wife's lover, Philip Barton Key II, one of Francis Scott Key's sons. Several people witnessed the killing in broad daylight. Sickles's lawyers (among them President Lincoln's future secretary of war, Edwin Stanton) won a verdict of not guilty in the first use of temporary insanity as a defense.
And in 1867, the last of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, John Surratt Jr., was tried in the same room -- the only trial in civil court of any of the plotters. After two months, eight of Surratt's jurors voted to acquit. One year later, the charges were dismissed, making young Surratt the only one of Booth's familiars to escape conviction.
-- Andrew C. A. Jampoler
Leesburg
