Nov. 23, 1963 - The assassination of a President is not covered by Federal law, according to the Justice Department. Lee Harvey Oswald will be tried under Texas statutes for murder. According to the Texas Penal Code, Article 1257, “The punishment for murder shall be death or confinement in the penitentiary for life or for any term of years not less than two.” There is no bail. If the penalty is death, Oswald’s execution will be carried out by electric chair. President James A. Garfield’s assassin, Charles Jules Guiteau, was tried in Washington in 1881. He was found guilty Jan. 25, 1882, and hanged at the jail in Washington on June 30, 1882. Leon F. Czolgosz, who shot President William McKinley in Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 6, 1901, was tried in the Supreme Court of New York and convicted. He was electrocuted on Oct. 29, 1901, at Auburn State Prison, at Auburn, N.Y. John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was shot by cavalry soldiers in Fredericksburg, Va., on April 25, 1865.
