Insanity: Murder, Madness, and the Law

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The insanity defense is one of the oldest fixtures of the Anglo-American legal tradition. Though it is available to people charged with virtually any crime, and is often employed without controversy, homicide defendants who raise the insanity defense are often viewed by the public and even the legal system as trying to get away with murder. Often it seems that legal result of an insanity defense is unpredictable, and is determined not by the defendants mental state, but by their lawyers and psychologists influence.

From the thousands of murder cases in which defendants have claimed insanity, Doctor Ewing has chosen ten of the most influential and widely varied. Some were successful in their insanity plea, while others were rejected. Some of the defendants remain household names years after the fact, like Jack Ruby, while others were never nationally publicized. Regardless of the circumstances, each case considered here was extremely controversial, hotly contested, and relied heavily on lengthy testimony by expert psychologists and psychiatrists. Several of them played a major role in shaping the criminal justice system as we know it today.

In this book, Ewing skillfully conveys the psychological and legal drama of each case, while providing important and fresh professional insights. For the legal or psychological professional, as well as the interested reader, Insanity will take you into the minds of some of the most incomprehensible murderers of our age.

Insanity: Murder, Madness, and the Law Review

The insanity defense is rarely attempted and even more rarely successful. Even when someone is floridly psychotic with an unequivocal history of severe mental illness, proving that he or she did not know the difference between right and wrong is extremely difficult. One study found that the defense was used in less than 1% of cases, and was successful only about one-fourth of the time. Another public misconception is that successful use of the insanity defense allows people to "get off" for the crime. In reality, most insanity acquittees go to locked state hospitals, often for the rest of their lives.

In this book, Charles Patrick Ewing attempts to correct the many public and professional misperceptions through case studies of 10 high-profile insanity cases, including those of Jack Ruby, David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, and Andrea Yates.

Each case is fascinating, and demonstrates the disconnect between public perceptions and the real world of law. In some cases, the defense is attempted as a last resort, when a killer is caught red-handed and has no other plausible explanation. In others, the defendant is crazy as a bedbug but still not found insane.

Whatever the factual circumstances, most insanity trials come down to a battle between competing experts. Ewing vividly portrays these battles, some involving luminaries in the fields of forensic psychiatry and psychology, bringing us lengthy excerpts from the actual trial transcripts of the expert testimony. Don't miss, for example, the epic WWF Smackdown-style confrontation between prominent forensic psychiatrists Park Dietz and Dorothy Otnow Lewis in the trial of Arthur Shawcross.

Tracing the cases from pretrial competency motions to postconviction appeals, Ewing demonstrates the unpredictable influences of state laws, attorney acumen, jury composition, and judicial opinion on real-world outcomes.

Several of these chapters could stand alone as excellent teaching tools for forensic psychologists and psychiatrists or criminal attorneys. One of these is the torturous case of Scott Panetti of Texas, who represented himself while floridly psychotic and was convicted and sentenced to death before undergoing several rounds of high-level appeals. I do wish Ewing had included more geographic breadth; eight of the ten cases are from New York and Texas. But that is a minor quibble with an outstanding volume.

Ewing is a master writer, having brought us the equally engrossing case study volume, Minds on Trial: Great Cases in Law and Psychology, as well as other forensic psychology texts on family violence, battered women, children who kill, and several others. I highly recommend this latest offering.

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