The William Freeman Murder Trial

An explosive account of a brutal multiple murder in Upstate New York, which triggered one of the first American trials to employ the insanity defense. Antebellum culture is spectacularly exposed in this book of horrific multiple murder and madness in Upstate New York. Andrew W. Arpey offers insight into subjects that will have broad appeal to historians and scholars of law, journalism, religion, psychiatry, politics, race, and reform. Drawing on newspapers, trial accounts, and private papers, Arpey shows the political machinations surrounding the case and the heated debate the trial set off over the relationship of race and crime, the use of punishment, and the boundaries of legal responsibility. His superb reconstruction of the trial, the motivations of its many actors, and the trial's status in American history place this book alongside the best crime novels. In 1846 William Freeman, a young man of African and Native American descent, stabbed to death four members of the Van Nest family with no apparent motive. His victims, all of whom were white, included an

Andrew W. Arpey lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he was born. After receiving a B.A. from the State University of New York College at Cortland, he went on to earn his M.A. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany. Mr. Arpey is employed at the New York State Archives in Albany, New York.