The insanity plea

the long version

The material presented on the seven cases in this book is, for the most part, based upon court transcripts and judicial decisions. We have limited interviews of participants in order to place the reader as nearly as possible in the same position as the juror in order to better understand the forces that play upon jury decisions. We have relied upon the judicial record to reconstruct the story of these trials. Our discussion does not attempt to ferret out the "real" truth of the crime. Rather, we are interested in understnading the jurors' decisions, shaped as they are by the objective testimony, the psychiatrist-experts' opinions, and the structure of the legal system. - Preface.