Guilty by Reason of Insanity

Book excerpt: A psychiatrist and an internationally recognized expert on violence, Dorothy Otnow Lewis has spent the last quarter century studying the minds of killers. Among the notorious murderers she has examined are Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, and Mark David Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon. Now she shares her groundbreaking discoveries--and the chilling encounters that led to them. From a juvenile court in Connecticut to the psychiatric wards of New York City's Bellevue Hospital, from maximum security prisons to the corridors of death row, Lewis and her colleague, the eminent neurologist Jonathan Pincus, search to understand the origins of violence. GUILTY BY REASON OF INSANITY is an utterly absorbing odyssey that will forever change the way you think about crime, punishment, and the law itself.