Roland Molineux (1901)

People of the State of New York v. Roland Molineux 

Katherine Adams, sixty-two years old, died on December 28, 1898 shortly after drinking a glass of water containing bromo-seltzer.  Harry Seymour Cornish, a cousin of Adams, had received the bromo-seltzer in the mail. Cornish had taken it home, to the lodgings he shared with Katherine Adams, and had given it to her when she had complained of a headache. 

It was alleged that Roland Molineux, a chemist, had added poison to the bromo-seltzer and had sent it to Cornish after the two men had quarreled. The district attorney, Asa Bird Gardiner, indicted Molineux in 1899 for murder.  Molineux was found guilty and sentenced to death.

He won an appeal, however, on the grounds that the prosecution had introduced evidence in court to suggest that Molineux had previously poisoned Henry Barnet in similar circumstances. The Court of Appeals, in a landmark decision, ruled that the prosecution could not introduce evidence alleging a previous crime if that crime was not part of the indictment.

Molineux was released from Sing Sing prison but suffered a mental breakdown shortly afterwards and died in 1917.

Source: Harold Schecter, The Devil’s Gentleman: Privilege, Poison and the Trial that Ushered in the Twentieth Century (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007)