CHAPTER TWELVE- BEAT THE WHITES (of three eggs)

     “Mike,” said I, “Is there no way in getting out of these cells to make our escape?” In the meantime Joe came tipping to my cell with the promised tools to cut our way out, that we might make our escape. A small hole through a thin panel door was to be made, large enough for the saw to go through, then a piece was to be cut out large enough for me to go through……By twelve o’clock we was on the wall.”- Austin Reed The Life and  Confessions of a Haunted Convict

     It’s only fitting we end with one last sympathetic murderer. It won’t be Henry Wyatt. William Henry Seward’s choice of Henry Wyatt as his test case for “temporary insanity” makes about as much sense as the Jennings children not finding their father’s frozen corpse on Christmas day. But that’s how these things work out. Henry Seward now sat across the same defense table from the murderer Henry Wyatt; attempting to prove he was crazy. New York Atty. Gen. John Van Buren, fresh off his crushing blow to the Calico Indian leadership—Cornelius and Elias Osterhout convicted of murder and kidnapping—was the prosecutor. Knowing all the pitfalls of mounting an insanity defense, Van Buren would be a worthy adversary. The Wyatt case gave Seward the means to his end of addressing reforms that had stalled while he was in office, five years prior to trial. Henry would put the system on trial against the son of the man who had hanged his cousin James Teed and poor Dave Dunning, as well as convicted and eventually pardoned Jack Hodges. Seward didn’t realize at the time he would soon have another chance to test his legal theories, in a more appropriate case.

     Although Captain U.F. Doubleday was the one who ordered Wyatt brutalized, he also held a grudging respect for the tough convict, categorizing him as a “shrewd” man. Doubleday detailed Wyatt’s escape plan with the awe of a true fan. In his opinion there was no indication that Henry Wyatt was insane, before, during, or after, the stabbing of James Gordon. If anything, all evidence pointed to the contrary. The Gordon attack was a pre-meditated, planned, calculated, and cooly executed murder. Wyatt was just as sane as the next sociopath.  

     

Dr. Amariah Brigham sworn

By NYS Atty Gen. John Van Buren:

Q. So far as the circumstances of the prisoner’s [Wyatt’s] escape have any bearing either way, do they not rather prove that he was sane than insane?
A. Not necessarily. I have known crazy people to escape from the asylum and go to lawyers.

  Ouch! 

   Sane or insane, all the experts were getting their chance to weigh in. John Van Buren had failed in 1842 to get a Monticello jury to find in favor of C.W. Hardenbergh’s much more obvious mental insufficiencies. Van Buren knew first hand how difficult the insanity defense was and used this to his advantage in Auburn. Henry Wyatt was a classic case of hardened criminality….… not insanity. Plus, even the victim James Gordon garnered no sympathy with the jury. To D.A. Luman Sherwood, Atty. Gen. John Van Buren, and all those farmers sitting on the jury, it was an open and shut case of premeditated murder. If Wyatt hanged, nobody would mourn either man. To the Auburn jury it looked more like Seward was the crazy one. 

     Samuel Yaple was again called to the stand. “The blows [on Wyatt] continued for some time after I counted forty, and Van Auken then ordered him to his cell.” Yaple testified, “He went to his cell and kept halloing, and Van Auken told him to shut up, and sent for Mr. Doubleday, and when came told him “This man wants another dozen before he will stop.” Doubleday said “Give him another dozen.” And they dragged him out the door.”  I heard 14 blows. I thought then was more like a baker’s dozen.”

     As the heavily circulated document from Eastern State Prison illustrates, “mental health” and the instances of it going awry, that seemed to be plaguing penal institutions at an increasing rate in the 1840’s, are discounted repeatedly; as always given fantastical sources like masturbation. When did these convicts ever have time to jerk off?