Editing Albert Fish (section)

==Trial and execution==
Fish's trial for the murder of Grace Budd began on March 11, 1935, in [[White Plains, New York]]. Frederick P. Close presided as judge, and [[Westchester County, New York|Westchester County]] Chief Assistant District Attorney Elbert F. Gallagher was [[prosecution|prosecuting]] attorney. Fish's [[defense (law)|defense]] counsel was James Dempsey, a former prosecutor and the one-time mayor of [[Peekskill, New York]]. The trial lasted for ten days. Fish pleaded [[insanity]], and claimed to have [[Auditory hallucination|heard voices from God]] telling him to kill children. Several psychiatrists testified about Fish's [[Sexual fetishism|sexual fetishes]], which included [[sadism and masochism]], [[flagellation]], [[exhibitionism]], [[voyeurism]], [[piquerism]], [[human cannibalism|cannibalism]], [[coprophagia]], [[urophilia]], [[hematolagnia]], [[pedophilia]], [[necrophilia]], and [[infibulation]]. Dempsey, in his summation, noted that Fish was a "psychiatric phenomenon" and that nowhere in legal or medical records was there another individual who possessed so many sexual abnormalities.<ref name="Schechter" /> 

The defense's chief expert witness was [[Fredric Wertham]], a psychiatrist with an emphasis on [[child development]] who conducted psychiatric examinations for the New York criminal courts. During two days of testimony, Wertham explained Fish's obsession with religion and specifically his preoccupation with the biblical story of [[Abraham]] and [[Isaac]] ([[Book of Genesis|Genesis]] 22:1–24). Wertham said that Fish believed that similarly "sacrificing" a boy would be [[penance]] for his own sins and that even if the act itself was wrong, angels would prevent it if God did not approve. Fish attempted the sacrifice once before but was thwarted when a car drove past. Edward Budd was the next intended victim, but he turned out to be larger than expected so he settled on Grace. Although he knew Grace was female, it is believed that Fish perceived her as a boy.<ref name="Schechter" /> Wertham then detailed Fish's cannibalism, which in his mind he associated with [[Holy Communion|communion]]. The last question Dempsey asked Wertham was 15,000 words long, detailed Fish's life and ended with asking how the doctor considered his mental condition based on this life. Wertham simply answered "He is insane."<ref name="Schechter" />

Gallagher [[cross-examination|cross-examined]] Wertham on whether Fish knew the difference between right and wrong. He responded that he did know but that it was a perverted knowledge based on his opinions of sin, atonement, and religion and thus was an "insane knowledge".<ref name="Schechter" /> The defense called two more psychiatrists to support Wertham's findings.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Fish Held Insane By Three Experts. Defense Alienists Say Budd Girl's Murderer Was And Is Mentally Irresponsible |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1935/03/21/archives/fish-held-insane-by-three-experts-defense-alienists-say-budd-girls.html |quote=Three psychiatrists testified in Supreme Court today that Albert H. Fish, on trial for the murder of Grace Budd in June, 1928, was legally insane when he committed the murder and has been insane since that date. |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=May 21, 1935 |access-date=March 29, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180704040212/https://www.nytimes.com/1935/03/21/archives/fish-held-insane-by-three-experts-defense-alienists-say-budd-girls.html |archive-date=July 4, 2018 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all}}</ref> The first of four rebuttal witnesses was Menas Gregory, the former manager of the Bellevue Hospital, where Fish was treated during 1930. He testified that Fish was abnormal but sane. Under cross-examination, Dempsey asked if coprophilia, urophilia, and pedophilia indicated a sane or insane person. Gregory replied that such a person was not "mentally sick" and that these were common perversions that were "socially perfectly alright" and that Fish was "no different from millions of other people", some very prominent and successful, who had the "very same" perversions.

The next witness was the resident physician at [[The Tombs]], Perry Lichtenstein. Dempsey objected to a doctor with no training in psychiatry testifying on the issue of sanity, but Justice Close overruled on the basis that the jury could decide what weight to give a prison doctor. When asked whether Fish's causing himself pain indicated a mental condition, Lichtenstein replied, "That is not masochism", as he was only "punishing himself to get sexual gratification". The next witness, Charles Lambert, testified that coprophilia was a common practice and that religious cannibalism may be psychopathic but "was a matter of taste" and not evidence of a psychosis. The last witness, James Vavasour, repeated Lambert's opinion.<ref name="Schechter" /> Another defense witness was Mary Nicholas, Fish's 17-year-old stepdaughter. She described how Fish taught her and her brothers and sisters several games involving overtones of masochism and child molestation.<ref name="crimelibrary" /><!--{{quotation|He went into his room and he had a little pair of trunks, brown trunks, that he put on. He put those on and came out into the front room, and he got down on his hands and knees, and he had a paint stick that he stirred paint with. ... He would give the stick to one of us, and then he would get down on his hands and knees and we would sit on his back, one at a time, with our back facing him, and then we would put up so many fingers, and he was to tell how many fingers we had up, and if he guessed right, which he never did, why, we weren't supposed to hit him. Sometimes, he would even say more fingers than we really had. And if he never guessed right, why, we would hit him as many fingers as we would have up.<ref name="crimelibrary" />}}-->

None of the jurors doubted that Fish was insane, but ultimately, as one later explained, they felt he should be executed anyway.<ref name="Schechter" /><ref name=scott>{{cite book|last1=Scott|first1=Gini Graham|title=American Murder: Volume 1: Homicide in the Early 20th Century|date=2007|publisher=Praeger|location=Westport, CT|isbn=978-0-275-999-77-3|page=85|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=63Et0WJR_ooC}}</ref> They found him to be [[sanity|sane]] and guilty, and the judge sentenced the defendant to [[Capital Punishment|death]] by [[electrocution]]. Fish arrived at prison in March 1935, and was executed on January 16, 1936, in the [[electric chair]] at [[Sing Sing]]. He entered the chamber at 11:06&nbsp;p.m. and was pronounced dead three minutes later.<ref name="pay">{{Cite news |title=Albert Fish, 65, Pays Penalty at Sing Sing |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1936/01/17/archives/slayer-of-budd-girl-dies-in-electric-chair-albert-fish-65-pays.html |quote=Albert Fish, 65&nbsp;years old, of 55 East 128th Street, Manhattan, a house painter who murdered Grace Budd, 6, after attacking her in a Westchester farmhouse in 1928, was put to death tonight in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=January 17, 1936 |access-date=March 29, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180704040955/https://www.nytimes.com/1936/01/17/archives/slayer-of-budd-girl-dies-in-electric-chair-albert-fish-65-pays.html |archive-date=July 4, 2018 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all}}</ref> He was buried in the Sing Sing Prison Cemetery. Fish is said to have helped the executioner position the electrodes on his body. His last words were reportedly, "I don't even know why I'm here."<ref name="Troy Taylor 2004"/> According to one witness present, it took two jolts before Fish died, creating the rumor that the apparatus was short-circuited by the needles that Fish had inserted into his body.<ref name="SerialKillers" /> These rumors were later regarded as untrue, as Fish reportedly died in the same fashion and time frame as others in the electric chair.<ref name="Troy Taylor 2004"/>

At a meeting with reporters after the execution, Fish's lawyer James Dempsey revealed that he was in possession of his client's "final statement". This amounted to several pages of hand-written notes that Fish apparently penned in the hours just prior to his death. When pressed by the assembled journalists to reveal the document's contents, Dempsey refused, stating, "I will never show it to anyone. It was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read."<ref name="Troy Taylor 2004"/>