Rufus Choate successfully employs a vigorous defense of a client accused of manslaughter.

(March) Albert Tirrell, a married man, had been charged with killing Maria Bickford, a woman who is not his wife, in a rooming house on today’s Cedar Lane Way (then Mount Vernon Place) on October 27, 1845. But Rufus Choate, employs a number of novel arguments in his client’s defense. First, he maintains that the woman committed suicide. Then, he argues that if Tirrell did kill her, it was because she was leading him into sin – or that he killed her in his sleep. Although the jury is not persuaded by the last argument, Tirrell is acquitted in March, 1846.