The String of Pearls (1850), p. 564

"Have you finished?"
"Finished what?" he cried, in a startling tone. "Finished what?—Finished pleading for my life? Yes, I have, for I know that they have made up their minds to murder me. I have no witnesses—they all all in the grave now. That woman, Lovett, who is dead, you tell me—I cannot say if she be dead or not, she is hard to kill—that woman could exculpate me; but, as I say, my witnesses are in the grave, and there is no truth in spirits visiting this world again, or she and the man you say I murdered would appear here, and yell in your ears, all of you, that I did not do it."
The judge sat quite patiently. He was evidently resolved to hear quietly what Todd chose to say. It could but occupy a little more time; and as his fate was fixed, it did not matter.
"If you have finished your observations, prisoner," said the judge, "it will now be my duty to proceed to pass upon you the sentence of the law."
"But I have said I did not do it. I am not guilty."
"It does not lie within my power to decide that question. The jury have found you guilty, and all I have to do in my capacity here is, in accordance with that finding, to sentence you according to law. If you could have stated any legal impediment to the passing of the sentence, it would have had effect; but now it is my painful duty to—"
"Hold! I will, and can state a legal impediment."
"What is it?"
"I am mad!"
The judge opened his eyes rather wider than usual at this statement, and the jury looked at each other in wonder and amazement. Among the spectators there was a general movement, too, of surprise.
"Mad!" said the judge.
"Yes," added Todd, holding up his arms, "I am mad—quite mad. Do you think any other but a madman would have done the deeds with which you charge me? I either did not do them, and am saved, or I did do all these murders, the consequences of which you would heap upon my head, and am mad. What is there in the wide world would compensate a man for acting as you say I have acted? Could he ever know peace again? What is madness but an affliction of providence? and dare you take the life of a man, who has acted in a certan way, in consequence of a disease with which the Almighty has thought proper to visit him? I tell you you dare not, and that I am mad!"
This speech was uttered with a vehemence that made it wonderfully effective; and at its conclusion Todd still held up his arms, and glared upon the judge with the look of one who had advanced something that was utterly and completely unanswerable.
The judge leant over to the recorder, and whispered something to him, and the recorder whispered to the judge.
"Mad! Mad!" shrieked Todd again.
The Attorney-General now whispered something to the judge, who nodded; and then addressing Todd, he said in calm and measured tones—
"However great the novelty of a plea of insanity, put in by the party himself, may be, it will yet meet with every attention. I shall now proceed to pass sentence of death upon you; and after you are removed to the jail of Newgate, certain physicians will see you, and report upon your mental condition to the Secretary of State, who will act accordingly."
Todd dropped his arms.
The judge put on the black cap, and continued—
"Sweeny Todd, you have been convicted of the crime of murder; and certain circumstances, which it would have been improper to produce before this court
in the progress of your trial, lead irresistibly to the belief that your life for years past has been one frightful scene of murder; and that not only the unhappy gentleman for whose murder you now stand here in so awful a position has