TRUE
- Jul 31
- 2 min read
In 1845, a man left his wife and children for a young mistress. One morning, he crept into her bedroom and murdered her by slitting her throat, then set the building on fire. After doing all that, he fled three states away. When he was finally caught, his lawyer came up with a defense completely unheard of at the time and it sounded much like fiction.
This is the story of Albert Tirrell and his lawyer's sleepwalking defense, the first of its kind in American history.
When the trial began in 1846, all evidence pointed to Tirrell as the one who had committed the crimes. There were witnesses who saw him at the location when the crime unfolded.
Rufus Choate
His lawyer, Rufus Choate, couldn't really argue it wasn't him, since there was too much evidence against him. So he built his defense on something entirely unheard of at the time. He claimed Tirrell was a chronic sleepwalker who had committed the whole act while being unconscious. Choate argued that Tirrell had no control over his actions and was therefore not guilty.
Based on the testimony from Tirrell's family that he had a history of sleepwalking, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. It was a historic moment, the first time such a defense had ever been used and won.
Prosecutors weren't done though. They came back and charged him with arson for the same fires. Choate used the exact same sleepwalking defense and it worked again. Not guilty, a second time.
However, Tirrell didn't walk away completely clean. He was charged with adultery and served three years of hard labour in a prison.
After the case was over, Tirrell even wrote to his lawyer asking for half his fees back, since he believed the case was too easy to win.
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