Medical Malpractice: No Way to Go Of the four presidents assassinated while in office, two of them are deeply engraved in the public’s collective memory. William McKinley had been president for a full term by the time he was shot and he was six months into his second, Lincoln and Kennedy had both served about the same time. But, to great shame, James A. Garfield was president for less than four months before being punctured by Charles Guiteau’s bullet; probably a nonfatal wound had the first responders at the scene been more careful. At his trial Guiteau shouted, “Your Honor, I admit to shooting the president; but not to his killing.”
