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Czolgosz was indicted and arraigned on September 16, and the trial commenced one week later in Buffalo’s city hall. The accused, resigned and unrepentant, pled guilty, but Judge Truman C. White, one of the most experienced of New York’s supreme court justices, instructed the court clerk to enter a plea of not guilty in accordance with New York state law. Loran L. Lewis and Robert C. Titus, the two retired justices of the state supreme court appointed to serve as defense counsel, didn’t hide their disgust at having been handed the assignment.

District Attorney Penney focused on the medical aspects of the president’s wound and death. During cross-examination, Dr. Herman Mynter, one of the attending physicians, discussed why the doctors did not find the second bullet. He explained that given McKinley’s weakened condition, further search risked killing him on the operating table. Doctors did not find the bullet during the autopsy, he noted, because the McKinley family did not want the body mutilated.

The prosecution then established beyond any doubt that the defendant had committed the crime. Czolgosz’s signed confession and interrogation immediately after the shooting confirmed his guilt. The only hope for a not-guilty verdict remained with the question of the defendant’s mental state, a matter of much newspaper speculation in the weeks preceding the trial. The prosecution and the defense had engaged six psychiatrists to examine Czolgosz, but the alienists, as they were then known, found no evidence of insanity. Defense counsel never even raised the issue until closing arguments, and then only weakly. In fact, defense counsel called no witnesses on Czolgosz’s behalf. In fairness, though, the defendant refused to discuss the matter with either attorney, leaving them little on which to base a defense.

President William McKinley's funeral

The state rested its case after just one and a half days, and the judge issued his instructions to the jury. In 30 minutes they returned with the expected verdict -- guilty in the first degree. The trial had been a model of expediency, but it hardly represented an example of a strong defense. By today’s standards it would likely result in a mistrial on appeal. But in 1901, given the crime’s dastardly nature and a public calling for blood, defense counsel did not file an appeal.

President William McKinley's funeral

The following month, the state of New York carried out Czolgosz’s death sentence at the penitentiary in Auburn. The warden received more than 1,000 requests for invitations to the execution, but he allowed only 26 witnesses in accordance with state law. Prison officials also rejected two morbid proposals -- one from a museum curator to buy the corpse for $5,000 and another from a kinescope operator for $2,000 to film the condemned man’s walk to the death chamber. On October 29 the executioner threw a switch and sent 1,700 volts of electricity through Czolgosz’s body. Officials were afraid that removal of Czolgosz’s corpse might cause a spectacle, so they secured the family’s permission to inter it in the prison cemetery. Prison guards doused the body with sulfuric acid to render it unrecognizable. At Czolgosz’s request, the prison chaplain did not conduct a religious ceremony.

President William McKinley's funeral

In spite of death threats made towards McKinley during his presidency, he had been protected by the most casual and primitive security. The president had often walked unattended in Canton and strolled alone on the White House grounds without George Foster in attendance. After his death -- the third presidential assassination in 36 years -- Congress stepped up security for United States presidents by directing the Secret Service to add the protection of the president to its duties. Two years later, Congress enacted legislation that made presidential protection a permanent Secret Service responsibility.

The images showing the execution of Leon Czolgosz are from a collection of original films shot by Thomas Edision at the Pan-American. However the "execution" shown in these films is actually a reinactment and does not depict the actual death of Czolgosz.

Additional Sources:

www.americanpresident.org
www.reformation.org
www.nndb.com
www.crimelibrary.com
www.answers.com
aboutfacts.net/
www.buffalohistoryworks.com
blog.topix.net

William McKinley (1897-1901)
25th President of the United States

President William McKinley

Vice President: Garret A. Hobart (1897-1899), Theodore Roosevelt (1901)

Born: January 29, 1843, Niles, Ohio

Nickname: "Idol of Ohio"

Education: Allegheny College

Religion: Methodist

Marriage: January 25, 1871, to Ida Saxton (1847-1907)

Children: Katherine McKinley (1871-1875), Ida McKinley (1873)

Career: Lawyer

Political Party: Republican

Writings: The Tariff in the Days of Henry Clay and Since (1896)

Died: September 14, 1901, Buffalo, New York

Buried: Canton, Ohio (adjacent to Westlawn Cemetery)

Biography: A Life in Brief

For a long time, William McKinley was considered a mediocre President, a chief executive who was controlled by his political cronies and who was pressured into war with Spain by the press. Recent historians have been kinder to McKinley, seeing him instead as a decisive President who put America on the road to world power. McKinley's difficult foreign policy decisions, especially his policy toward China and his decision to go to war with Spain over Cuban independence, helped the U.S. enter the twentieth century as a new and powerful empire on the world stage.

Political Opportunities

Born in 1843 and raised in Ohio, William McKinley planned as a young man to become a Methodist minister. When the Civil War started, McKinley proved a valiant soldier, rising in the ranks from a private to a brevet major on the staff of Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, who became a lifelong friend and mentor. When he returned to Ohio to practice law, he used his connections with Hayes to rise rapidly in Ohio politics. He served in Congress from 1877 to 1891 before becoming governor of Ohio. Congressman McKinley was the Republican Party's leading spokesman for protectionism in foreign trade. His McKinley Tariff of 1890 established substantially higher tariff rates on imported goods in order to protect U.S. business and manufacturing.

Young Major McKinley

The nation's devastating economic collapse in 1893 turned voters against the Democratic Party’s hold on the presidency, giving McKinley a good shot at the White House in 1896. McKinley argued that his commitment to protective tariffs on imported goods would cure unemployment and stimulate industrial growth. McKinley’s political ally from Ohio, the industrialist Marcus Hanna, helped McKinley organize and fund his campaign. McKinley beat Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the greatest electoral sweep in twenty-five years. Four years later, the popular McKinley ran on a strong record and defeated Bryan again, by even larger margins.

Strong International Presence

McKinley led the U.S. into its first international war with a European power since the War of 1812. The decision to come to the aid of the Cubans struggling to throw off Spanish rule was hastened by reports that Spain was responsible for the explosion of the U.S. battleship Maine. On April 25, 1898, Congress declared war, promising to secure independence for Cuba once the war ended. To secure America's position in the Pacific, McKinley immediately pushed a joint resolution through Congress to annex the Hawaiian Islands. After three short months of fighting, the U.S. was victorious. The peace treaty between the United States and Spain granted Cuba its independence -- although the island became a U.S. protectorate -- and gave the United States control of former Spanish colonies, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Practically overnight, the United States became a colonial power, but not without costs. The United States almost immediately entered into a brutal conflict with Filipino nationalists who rejected American rule.

Ida McKinley on her wedding trip.

Further asserting American power on the global scene, McKinley sent 2,000 troops to China to help the Europeans put down the Boxer Rebellion. He also intervened twice in Nicaragua to protect U.S. property interests. Both of these actions were examples of the U.S. as a rising hemispheric and world power.

To obtain a hold on world markets, McKinley authorized his secretary of state, John Hay, to issue the "Open Door" notes on China. These notes declared U.S. support for an independent China and expressed the American desire that all nations with commercial interests in China compete on an equal footing. The war with Spain and the Open Door strategy laid the groundwork for a new American empire.

Personal Challenges and Assassination

First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley never recovered from the devastating loss of both her infant children as well as her mother within three years of her marriage to McKinley. She developed epilepsy, a disease for which there was no treatment in the late nineteenth century. McKinley gave the First Lady his full attention, breaking White House protocol in seating her by his side at State dinners. When he was shot by an assassin in 1901, McKinley said to his personal secretary, George B. Cortelyou, "My wife, be careful, Cortelyou, how you tell her -- oh, be careful." McKinley died from his wounds eight days later, on September 14, 1901.

Despite criticism from contemporaries and historians, many of whom disagreed with his policies and found his leadership wanting, McKinley was a President who acted decisively in going to war with Spain, asserted great presidential authority over his cabinet and generals, and understood the link between foreign markets and national prosperity. During his administration, the U.S. acquired possessions that allowed it to become a major world power.