Trial and Execution
Once the body was discovered, a police investigation led to Father Schmidt and he was arrested and charged with the murder. A media circus spectacle ensued, comparable to those caused by the Scott Peterson and Mark Hacking cases of a later era, as the New York papers competed against each other with an ever greater degree of sensationalism regarding the case. After feigning insanity during his first trial, which ended with a hung jury, Father Schmidt was eventually convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death in the electric chair. On February 18, 1916, Father Schmidt was executed at Sing Sing Prison; he remains the only priest ever executed for murder in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Hans Schmidt (priest)
Famous quotes containing the words trial and, trial and/or execution:
“Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident—the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.”
—Edward C. Banfield (b. 1916)
“I have proved by actual trial that a letter, that takes an hour to write, takes only about 3 minutes to read!”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.”
—Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)