The Insanity Defense with Mackenzie Joy Brennan

Like broadly speaking, if you're an American woman and you're not insane in the 1920s and 30s, then like you're not aware of what's going on.

Welcome to You're Wrong About.

I'm Sarah Marshall and this week we are of course investigating the insanity defense,

the law, the myth, the legend with Mackenzie Mackenzie Joy Brennan.

McKenzie was last with us for our episode, Has the Supreme Court Always Been This Terrible?

Mackenzie is a lawyer and legal analyst and would like to tell us that since we last talked, the Supreme Court has also shown us that it can get even more terrible.

So we should also probably have her back on to talk about that too.

But in the meantime, this episode really does have so many stories within it.

A Great Depression-era woman facing off against the electric chair, Jodi Foster, and of course, Ronald Reagan.

Mackenzie is also joining us for an upcoming bonus episode.

I can't wait.

And if you haven't listened to our bonus episodes, You should check them out sometime.

We have had some really fun stuff lately, including a discussion of Beyond Belief, Fact or Fiction with Kelsey Webber Smith, and a conversation about Bigfoot, my favorite cryptid, with our inconvenient mammal correspondent, Lulu Miller.

And that's your introduction.

This is a law episode.

It's a history episode.

We're so happy to share these stories with you and to keep on learning about the legal world, which tries to make us feel dumb so we don't notice what people are up to.

But with a little bit of vocabulary and with a great guest like Mackenzie, we can learn to understand the world we're in.

And let's go do it together.

Welcome to Your Wrong About, the podcast where we talk about topics that you grew up hearing on Law and Order, my great joy and dream.

And with me today is our legal correspondent, our ConLaw correspondent, I believe actually, Mackenzie Brennan, to talk to us about the insanity defense.

I'm so excited about this, and I'm really glad to be doing it together because it is a wild ride, as the name would suggest, and

a lot of angry people at different phases about too many people being insane or not enough people being insane.

We got to do something about it.

We got to do something about it, and we got to think of the children.

I'm also reminded of, and this is me quoting from memory something I read years ago, but I swear to God that there was a like political cartoon around the time of the Leopold and Loeb trial because there was, you know, it was a huge media trial.

It was two rich teenagers who had, or close to teenagers, who had apparently decided to commit the perfect murder for fun.

Definitely made a big impression on Hitchcock.

And they always, always fail at it.

I feel like

Coberhan has this saying they're like, this time I'm the smartest one.

I'm going to get away with it.

And time immemorial, they all fail.

I guess, like, at the time, the forensic psychiatrist was referred to as an alienist.

Okay, yeah.

Right?

And obviously, if you're you have a robust defense, especially with Clarence Darrow involved, you're going to try and get a sympathetic alienist who says,

well, I mean, I think they were trying to mount insanity as one of their defense tactics.

And I think that there was a cartoon at the time that showed people reading about the trial or hearing about it, it, and that the joke was truly something that moment when you realize everyone's insane.

Oh, wow, that's great.

I wonder, do you know what year that was?

Tumblr is Eternal.

Yeah, seriously.

This was in the 20s, like mid-20s, 24.

It was like 27.

It was a jazzage trial.

Because that sets us up kind of nicely.

Okay.

We could start with the case that, like, illustrated this one version of the insanity defense, which is the McNaughton test.

So there are like stricter and less strict definitions over time, and we can look at them as a spectrum.

Well, let me start with like a bonehead question.

Go for it.

Okay.

So like today, right now, right, if you're like watching SVU with your grandma and they've got someone whose lawyer is using the insanity defense, like what is the average like American TV viewer's understanding of what that means?

And is that approximately what the actual legal definition is?

Oh, boy, I feel like maybe you are better qualified.

I don't know.

You're pretty legally savvy.

Oh, God.

I feel like knowing the law messes you up about what the average person thinks because it just rewires your brain in that way of thinking.

Right.

Okay, I think I have two levels of understanding.

Okay.

So I think, and I'm not confident that I'm right, but I think that the actual legal definition legally insane rather than medically, because of course

complicated.

Yeah, legally insane

right, as opposed to all the other possible definitions, is that you lack the capacity to tell the difference between right and wrong.

But as I say that, I'm like, is that true?

That might just be what they say on TV, like about how you have to wait 48 hours to report a missing person or whatever.

Which, like, don't go by those rules.

If somebody goes missing, please try to report them because that is not every state.

Yeah, there's our first PSA.

Right.

And then I think that, like, there's, you know, if you're like,

if you've watched even less law and order than I have, then you might just think that it's like some kind of boohoo, you know, sob story type defense where you're just like,

I'm insane.

And the judge is like, oh, poor baby.

Or, like, do you have a diagnosis?

Or were you having a crazy day?

Like, did people see you being insane?

Yeah.

But I know that also, like, across the board, there is this general American fear of someone getting off on a technicality.

And I think that that is one of the ways that we see that as happening.

And I'm very curious about

what kind of a distance we must travel between the average SVU viewer and what appears to really be going on and also why it's going on.

Yeah.

So I think that you're absolutely right.

And I know you've brought it up in different contexts on your show, but we're in this era where like this specter of evil people getting off on technicalities is looming over all of us.

And these people are beyond reform.

And so this is a really terrible fear.

And that world gets pretty far away from the whole founding principle of it's better that one or that 100 guilty men go free than that one innocent be imprisoned.

Like that, those two conceptions are pretty far apart.

And yet I think we've landed in the, oh my god, somebody's going to be let off on a technicality world.

Right.

And in regards to the insanity defense, I think your definition is,

I think you're right that that's what a lot of people think it is.

That's kind of what I was going to say, too.

And it's pretty close to the truth.

The like lack of ability to determine the difference between.

Yeah.

And that's a pretty strict interpretation because if you think of it from really simple terms, anything that demonstrates trying to hide hide what you've done in theory could demonstrate that you understand at the very least that society sees this as wrong.

Right.

And also, like, as a question, because I have no idea what the answer is, but like, what if I'm like, okay, society recognizes that it would be wrong of me to assassinate this person, but I also understand based on my delusions

that they are controlling my brain, and so I have to, right?

I mean, that's a difficult area.

Yeah, and that's exactly what the problem, if you think it's a problem, is with this stricter definition.

So I actually was going to use a case from when that was more the law of the land.

Yeah.

And so we started there, but applied it in a kind of loose way.

Then we came to a much looser definition.

Then, and this is where we'll spend most of our time, John Hinckley Jr.

tried to kill President Reagan, got off on an insanity defense.

To get Cody Foster's attention, you know, I mean.

Which, like, who among us has not tried to do it?

Exactly.

Exactly.

But then everybody was very upset that he dared serve his sentence in a mental health facility, which he ended up serving 35 years at an inpatient facility.

So it's not like he was frolicking around.

And now he posts his acoustic guitar songs on YouTube.

Look, like, we'll talk more about him, but this is a guy.

He does paintings and has a rescue cat and writes his little acoustic songs that is less harmful than many people that I've met.

So

and probably talked about in your line of work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we'll get to his case though.

Yeah.

And of course, I'm always interested in a case where someone is able to access extremely robust legal defense and then the public sees that happening and is like, oh my God, no, that's too much defense.

We need to scale this back.

Totally.

It's another thing that we've talked about in other contexts that oftentimes when somebody has a successful defense,

and I do think this can go too far.

Like, I just was covering the Diddy trial, and he had

too much defense.

Nobody needs eight lawyers if they're one person, probably.

You don't need more resources than the government.

Like, at that point, it's really excessive.

But I mean, Hinckley was not a wealthy man.

I think, oh, actually, the first case that we're going to look at is an example of having a lot of legal resources because this gal had her legal fees paid for by William Randolph Hearst.

Okay, I want to hear about this one.

Yeah, right?

He wanted exclusive rights to her story.

So he, in exchange.

Now, why don't we have more tabloid media offering to pay for people's legal defense?

I'm sure it would be incredibly unethical, but still, but even so.

Exactly.

Well, Hearst blazed a lot of super cool trails that made policymakers say, like, okay, now we have to put this law into place because the ethics of this are so fuked.

See, honey, because of me, there's a warning.

Exactly.

Like the sign put on the wall that makes you aware that someone has tried this before.

So

there are a lot of cases that are like good early insanity defense ones, but like this case, it's from Arizona, like me, and it has everything.

It's got a hot 25-year-old woman with tuberculosis, lesbian affairs,

and then a fugitive surrendering in a funeral home right before Halloween.

Like this is a super fun case, except for the victims.

And then Hearst.

And then Hearst.

Yeah.

So this is Winnie Ruth Judd.

And in 1931.

Wow.

That is a name.

I know, right?

I want to hear her country single as well.

I know.

She could have had a rollicking career but for the fact that she moved out to Arizona with her erstwhile husband, Dr.

Judd, because she had tuberculosis and they thought that it would dry up her lungs.

Yeah, you do what you can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they move out there, but Dr.

Judd is busy being addicted to morphine, so he's not really paying attention to his wife.

As is the style at the time.

Totally, I would have done the same probably if I had the access.

But so she becomes friends with these two gals and it's a little unclear who was sleeping with whom.

But there are gals.

There's also another guy in the picture.

She gets really mad one night and long story short, the two gals end up dead.

Winnie, don't do that.

Yeah, no, you shouldn't.

I'm against that.

She didn't know what to do, so she chopped them up and put them in her travel trunk.

and hat box.

This is one of those ones where you're like, you might initially not know what to do, but then

certainly just a handful of minutes into it, you'll be like, oh, this is a very long process of sawing up human bodies that I've embarked on.

Maybe I shouldn't be doing this.

You know, I thought the same thing as I was reading about this case because it almost to me is proof of insanity that she's like, oh, shoot, I shot people.

You know what I should do?

put their limbs in my hat box and get on a train to Los Angeles.

No.

Like Like cross-state lines.

It certainly is an evidence of sanity.

Exactly.

If anything, it's going to err on the not super stable side.

It's just not practical.

Yeah.

It's not because that's how she's caught.

So she gets on the train and her trunk is leaking.

And they're like, it seems like you have a box full of

dripping human body parts, ma'am.

On our unair-conditioned train because trains are not air-conditioned in that era.

So she's got this putrid blood-leaking trunk, and the porter says,

You got to do something about this.

You can't bring your hunting spoils in the cargo hold.

They're like, Listen,

we're going to continue to not notice for a while because you are a little lady.

You are a cute little lady, so we'll give you some leeway.

And she's like, Oh,

I don't have the key, and then she just runs away.

So

she eventually gives herself up.

She's a smoothie.

She's not well.

Like, there's no read of this.

This is, to be clear, like, I know that this is a sad story.

It's very sad, but also, what an idiot.

I love it.

I feel like that's why she became somebody who, like, nobody in the state of Arizona wanted to see her executed.

By the time that she was released, people had been begging for her release for years because

with respect, she's so dumb and frail

that nobody believes she did it herself.

Like, there's no way.

That she was able to do this murder herself.

Yeah, and chop up the people.

Like, she's a frail, tubercular 25-year-old whose motive is kind of unclear.

I like to believe that I am stronger than a young woman with tuberculosis in the 1920s, but I think I would really struggle to chop up two human bodies.

And then bring them to the train station.

Yeah, that too.

Yeah.

But that's a trick.

Yeah.

I don't know.

She had a buddy helping.

I don't know.

But the bottom line is that, like, the reason why I thought this would be a good case is that public opinion by the time all of the evidence came out was so in her favor.

And yet she almost died.

She almost was executed because there wasn't really a super clear insanity defense at trial option when she was put on trial.

And there was so much, I mean, this is.

an evergreen issue, but like media attention and jury tampering and all that good stuff that comes with it.

But

she gets to trial because she surrenders in the funeral home and they bring her on back to Phoenix.

Is this just a random funeral home that she runs into or does she have some kind of connection here?

Great question.

You would think there would be a connection, but no, I think she's just kind of wandering around.

Yeah, you got to hide somewhere.

There's another point in her journey where she's like hiding in a drain pipe and she writes a confession letter.

Wow.

One of many different variants of the confession letter.

So, like, she's messy.

People do not fugitive the way they used to anymore.

Or she was just one of a kind.

She was not great at strategizing, but she was sure fun to watch.

So she's just, it seems like she's kind of this madcap tabloid gal, you know, like the octo-mom or something.

And it's like, we tried to execute the octo-mom.

It's like, no, I think she's, I want to make fun of her choices.

I don't want her to die.

Right.

That is a great parallel.

Yeah, because I don't, I don't hate her.

Well, I'm sure some people would like to execute the octo mom, but I really don't want to.

She's a slightly different kind of messy, but it's hard to time adjust.

It's like inflation.

It's like hard to

do a direct parallel.

Yeah.

And that's a whole other topic is like true crime media of the 1920s and how all that

things come back for that one.

And speaking of Hearst, I'm sure the yellow journalism mixed in did not help anything.

Yeah.

But there's so much more to this case that, like, if you're interested, just look this gal up because there's super fun stuff, I say glibly.

So she gets convicted and sentenced to death.

And

I sent you, it's really ghoulish.

There's an invite.

No.

And I think I sent you the file.

So this is how we celebrated the eve of Winnie Ruth Judd's execution.

Okay, I have it.

Oh boy.

Well, it looks like a wedding invitation.

It's personally signed, yeah.

Signed by the warden.

So cute.

Addressed to a missus, and it says in kind of gothic font, you are respectfully invited to witness the execution of Winnie Ruth Judd at the Arizona State Prison at Florence.

I mean, literally, it's like the same kerning as a wedding invitation.

Yep.

Even like the way they do the hours at Florence.

Between the hours of 12 and 5 a.m.

Friday, April 21st, A.D.

Yeah,

1933.

I mean, this ends by the warden, though.

Yeah.

Come on, man.

And he had to sign a stack of these so that it had a personal touch, I guess.

Like bananas.

God.

I mean, this is the thing, this is one of the things about the American legal system where we're like, yes, it is a very solemn and sacred duty to remove people who have forfeited the right to life from Earth.

And it's like, yeah, but also you do things like nickname the electric chair Ol Sparky and like

invitations on at least one occasion.

It's not good.

And like somebody picked out the font to this because

when you said like gothic font, it occurred to me like, yeah, somebody went and decided like, no, this is the appropriate calligraphy style that we want for our.

They had, I don't know what the 1933 version of Kevin is.

They had Woodrow do it.

They sent Woodrow down to the stationers.

To get like the block text.

Yeah, so this is the 11th hour, obviously.

This poor little gal is freaking out.

She's having fits of what will later be recognized as insanity.

Recognized?

I don't know.

I mean, also, if you're like, broadly speaking, if you're an American woman and you're not insane in the 1920s and 30s, then like you're not aware of what's going on.

I mean, yeah, think of her circumstance.

Like she's got an addict husband who's also a doctor.

Who also might have chopped up her girlfriend's question mark?

I think the prevailing opinion is that they all were fighting over a guy and there was maybe a self-defense element, but also maybe the guy was involved in killing the girls.

Yeah.

Which that I buy the most, I think, because he sounds like no good.

Right.

And there being some kind of love quadrangle happening.

Totally.

So guess who intervenes at the 11th hour?

William Randolph Hearst?

No, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Of course.

Shopless.

What did she she do?

So she writes in.

I mean, I'm sure a lot of people have issues.

She's like, no one can execute you without your permission.

So cute.

Love the info.

So she writes in to ask for clemency, but obviously like the gears are already turning with the legal defense and somebody decides that like...

There was a lot of mess going on at her first trial.

There was a lot of jury misconduct.

The reason that the four person says that they sentenced her to death was that they thought it would make her talk.

So they really didn't want her to die.

They're like, this is a strategy, but that's not really a jury's job.

We use about the same tactic now, or we would if we could, I would say.

But we don't say it out loud if we do, because that's not what juries are for.

Strategizing to like get her to spill.

Instead, you like find out a juror posted something on their Facebook later on and you're like, hey.

Yeah, this is the really dirty equivalent of that.

So like there's a lot of stuff conspiring to get this execution overturned, but

what works is she's insane.

So, we're going to have another trial because at the time they didn't really have it so that you could assert it proactively, at least not in Arizona.

Hmm.

So, does that mean that there's like not necessarily kind of procedural room for yeah, exactly?

And I was like thumbing through the old statutes that they have online, and

it's mentioned that nobody who's insane can be executed, but there's no provision of how to assert that.

Or of like how to get an expert witness to say it, or it's just sort of like, yes, in theory, it would work, but we won't tell you how or anything.

Yeah, like we shouldn't do this, but there's no way to make sure that that doesn't happen in essence.

Don't you think that like, in essence, the spirit of American trial law can be summed up by the iconic meme, we're all trying to find the guy who did this?

Where it's like, there's, I feel like I run into in in these stories from history, a lot of this vibe of like, oh man, someone should write like a law or a statute that addresses this issue.

A lot of buck passing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's because like they're all afraid of doing it wrong, but then nobody does it.

It's the same thing we talked about with enumerating stuff in the Bill of Rights.

Like running a leftist coffee shop.

You can never do it perfectly, so why bother?

So why bother, truly, for many reasons.

Because someone might yell at you one time.

Couldn't survive that.

Yeah, so I think you're right.

But also, like, the people who make those mistakes are rarely there to answer for them.

Right.

Although, this is a pretty big oversight.

Like, writing a statutory code and saying, like, this should never happen, but not writing in the loophole.

That's a problem.

Yeah.

So they at least gave her this second trial, all for the purpose of insanity.

And this is under the McNaughton standard.

And that is what we actually have returned to a stricter version of now, post-Hinckley.

So we'll get to the modern iteration.

But basically, what this test is, is that somebody didn't have the mental capacity to understand their actions, like the nature of what they're doing, or didn't have the capacity to understand that what they're doing is wrong to your definition before, or that it violates the rights of another.

So that distilled is basically what you said.

And how long have we had that around?

At the time it was asserted in this case, it was less than 100 years old.

It was this guy named Daniel McNaughton in the UK, who I think tried to kill a prime minister's secretary because he thought that they were conspiring against him.

And it was a really similar situation that's like, oh, we shouldn't put somebody to death if they're fully crazy.

So

let's devise this rule that now is named after the would-be.

No, no, no, I think actually he succeeded at the assassination.

McNaughton did.

So

that's the McNaughton rule.

It's one of multiple approaches that can be used for the insanity defense.

So there's another one that's like the other end of the spectrum.

And this is called the Durham rule for anyone who's keeping score.

But that allows you to be not guilty if whatever act, criminal act you did, was the product of mental illness.

So like that really covers anything.

Right.

That's super easy.

Especially if you include narcissism, then we can get this whole administration off scot-free.

That's another thing that I think the Winnie Ruth Judd case shows is like how divorced medical understanding is from what these legal definitions are and how they do sometimes butt heads.

Obviously, back then, because we're looking at it.

And it seems like where the law intersects with medicine, medicine generally travels farther, faster because, you know, we are trying to stop science in this country, but it's harder.

And like the goal of science is progress.

And then the law sort of like comes scurrying afterwards, or maybe sometimes following casually afterwards.

It's almost like law wants to be set in stone, so

it's kind of antithetical to the whole idea of science progress.

Do you ever feel like the idea of the American legal system, which was so appealing to me when I was younger, and now I kind of like appreciate more for its messiness, maybe, but like just like being a young person watching Law and Order and being like, wow, isn't it amazing that like we found these eternal truths and now we're like running a system based off of them?

And it's like, yeah, that would be nice if it happened, but it definitely didn't.

You just kind of like have generations of people doing their best, but then when some of them refuse to let anyone revise what they said, it makes it kind of difficult and annoying.

Yeah, like, I think the only way that it does work, when I just said what I said, which is that it's antithetical to the idea of progress, I was like, oh, God, that's like it's true, but what a terrible thing.

Yeah.

That's not.

So I feel like, yes, I agree with you.

And it's a forever cycle of being like, oh, god damn it.

And then hoping that things get better.

Right.

Or we can, you know,

try and decriminalize progress a bit.

Maybe.

How about that?

But it feels like it appeals to sort of that most perfectionistic impulse within people to be like, we figured out how to handle things and we're not going to take any more comments at this time.

Right.

Well, and I guess, like, to play devil's advocate, there are two sides of this particular issue in the extreme, because obviously, look at what, for example, the current Supreme Court is doing with settled precedent.

Like, you don't want somebody, or a legal system rather, that allows you to make changes willy-nilly with every changing administration.

Yes, that's a very, very good point and a very timely point.

It shouldn't be that easy that we can just change every X number of years because some new interest comes in.

So I think that's like the other side we have to avoid, but I don't know what the medium is.

Well, I guess it all seems so easy when I'm just sitting on my couch complaining about it, you know?

I think we could fix it.

If we did it.

If we did it, we could really get this thing licked, probably

inside of a convention.

At its best, I do feel like in legal history, you can see this balance or this sort of tightrope being walked between those needs that you're describing, the need to sort of like be overly reverent for the law that you're creating and

the need to make it so flexible that anyone can come in and structurally reorganize it.

I don't know, there is something fascinating and troubling, and also, in the best of times, really

profound and impressive about when it kind of works or when people are sincerely trying to create that balance between protecting people from their worst impulses and recognizing their sovereignty, you know?

I would be happier if more of the stalwart folks or the regressive folks were actually reverent because I think part of the problem problem is that, like, right, they're not actually being true to print.

Well, this gets into the last episode we did.

Yeah, I know.

Like, they're just making up their own new thing and calling it reverence

for the past.

Yeah.

Right.

They're like, I love the Constitution so much that I am wiping my ass with it.

And it's like,

okay, interesting.

That I rewrote it.

And

yeah, so there's a little philosophical diversion.

Whatever, it's fine.

So this is where we are in the 20s.

We're in the jazz age.

Yeah, so

Winnie is

saved at the 11th hour by this insanity trial under the McNaughton standard.

And the evidence that comes out, it's medical evidence in the early 30s, and it is very sexist.

And it's a lot of doctors saying, like, look at how she twists her handkerchief there.

She won't stop twisting it.

Like, she's obsessed with her handkerchief.

She's like, Goldie Han, and death becomes her.

Free this woman.

That's pretty cool.

But, like, that truly was some evidence that they produced a trial.

Was like, we were watching her in the first trial, and she just wouldn't stop twisting her handkerchief.

And I'm thinking, like, huh.

My God, by this definition, I would have been toast.

Well, get this woman a fig shit spinner.

Exactly.

It's also, like, certainly through the 70s and 80s, and I would argue really like to this day, it's amazing how often sort of a lack of positive relationships with men is positioned as, you know, evidence that a woman is mentally unwell.

And it's like, perhaps it's the men's fault.

I don't know.

Maybe it's some other factor.

Maybe it's your morphine-addicted husband who makes your life a living hell.

Just possibly.

And so he comes on the stand, and he actually slaps her in the first trial because she was crying so hard that he had to.

Her husband?

Yeah.

So he.

Yeah.

They clearly have a very nice relationship.

Yeah.

But he gives evidence of her insanity.

And he says that she really wanted a baby and kept talking like she was going to have a baby.

And again, to me, I'm like, what else does a woman without a child

do in the early 30s?

Like, she has no purpose.

She's living here because she's unwell.

Her husband's crazy.

What are you supposed to do?

Talk about having a baby.

Like, that, I don't know.

So that's evidence, I guess, that she's unwell.

They also say sometimes she laughs out of nowhere.

Nothing funny is happening.

And she just laughs out of nowhere.

I feel like when people in these, again, like in 100 years ago and also today, when people have to present evidence that a woman is mentally ill, they just kind of like present evidence that she's a woman and they're like, well, same thing, really.

Yeah, yeah, that she reacts to things sometimes that we can't see, right?

Because certainly, what has always struck me about kind of women's mental illness as described in the 60s and 70s, and like not just legally, but by clinicians at the time, is that there's this idea of like, well, she's poorly adjusted, she's poorly adjusted to society, so she's mentally ill, right?

And it's like, well, how is she supposed to adjust to this?

Yeah, like, so in this case, like, her husband is clearly not a partner to her if he is both an addict and working as a doctor.

So, like, he's probably not there a whole lot.

If she physically can't bear children because she's too frail,

but that's kind of your prescribed purpose, that's going to take a toll on your psyche.

I don't know.

It's a little bit funny to me to be characterizing it like this because I feel like chronic illness is such a modern term.

Right.

I mean, we had other terms.

We could say wasting disease back in the day, but like, I mean, I guess this is the direction we're going in with like healthcare in this country.

But, like, imagine all the tubercular girlies on Instagram talking about living with tuberculosis because they contracted it from drinking raw milk.

It's

going to happen at any time.

Yeah.

But, you know, she has she has limited spoons.

She's got tuberculosis.

She does.

And especially, like, she's been living in this prison where she was going to be executed.

That's a culture shock, I'm sure, for anyone.

It's been a tough time.

People are sending out cute invitations to her execution.

And even her friends have vested interests, like Hearst wanted his stories.

So like, it's a weird time to be Winnie.

Yeah, Hearst is nobody's friend.

No.

Sadly.

So she gets re-classified and put into a mental health facility.

And I think she holds the record.

Which I'm sure is a great place to be.

I know.

But I think she holds the record of the most escapes.

Oh.

Yeah, she escaped like seven times in the 38 years she was there.

I hope it was fun.

Well, one time she went and

went to San Francisco and became a nanny

for a wealthy family for like a couple years under an assumed name.

And then they finally caught up with her and they were like, all right, back in the pokey Winnie.

This is my fun connection is my aunt was the paralegal on her case when she was eventually released.

Oh my god.

Yeah, and apparently she was a very nice old lady, and she just wanted to live her life and be left alone.

So

she died happily at like 93, and she was free.

Wow.

She outlived everybody.

Yeah, go Winnie Ruth Judd.

Sorry to your victims also.

Yeah.

Or, you know, whatever happened.

Whatever the hell happened.

Yeah.

Sorry to everybody, except the warden.

So I thought that was a fun illustration of how little medicine is involved.

Like, it's subjective.

I'm sure it can be done very well.

Right.

But it's really about what a jury can be convinced of and how, and whether a jury, or I guess a judge in some cases, can be convinced that

a defendant's behavior fits this criteria.

Is that about it?

Yeah, and to your point,

resources, too, because some of it's money, some of it is just like legal acumen.

In the Hinkley case, which we'll go to next, the prosecution, I think, only called two psychiatrists because they were like, well, this is a slam dunk.

And then the defense called 27.

Wow.

That's too many psychiatrists, honestly.

It's way too many.

There's probably a joke set up somewhere in there, but like, obviously...

There was an imbalance there.

It's as many psychiatrists as Jim Morrison had years of being alive.

It's not a joke, exactly.

It's more of a fact.

It's just a fact.

But yeah, I mean, it goes to show you that, like, never count your chickens, I guess.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They thought it was so obvious that he was guilty, that he wouldn't get off.

And then

sometimes, well, okay, let me, can I tell you, like, my understanding of

the story?

Okay.

Because I've read, you know, a bit about this.

It's like part of my general Reagan research.

Because, of course, Reagan is like the palpitine behind where we are now.

Everything, yeah.

And somehow he is alive.

That's going to happen our next election year.

They're going to be like, somehow Reagan is alive and then he's going to run for president, I guess.

Well, you know what?

The last speech he gave right before Hinkley shot him, he ended the speech with, and make America great again.

So he is

in a sense.

Okay.

So I remember reading about how, and I think this is to me like a really interesting thing about Hinkley is that he appears to have been like just around and like not trying very hard to find and assassinate Reagan or like he was thinking about it, but like he wasn't as far as I can remember like super dedicated.

No.

And then Reagan like happened to be at the Washington Hilton to talk to like Teamsters or something

and Hinkley was like, oh,

I'm right by the Washington Hilton.

I'm just gonna assassinate this guy.

I mean, he was at like pretty close range.

So it, you you know, he clearly was a much worse shot than Oswald.

He actually gave that as some evidence of his insanity, was the fact that he didn't aim.

That he wasn't very good at it.

Well, he says that he didn't try.

Huh.

That he totally could have if he wanted to.

He was trying a lot harder than most people do to assassinate the president, to be fair.

He was there with a gun, but...

Right.

And that he, like, he kind of like winged Reagan, right?

Or like a bullet, like, bounced off of part of the car and like into Reagan's torso something like that.

Yeah, and

other people were more grievously wounded right one of the victims did eventually die of complications related to the injuries right because there was a police officer who heard four people shot in 2015.

Oh my god.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like a metro police officer.

There was a Secret Service agent.

And then this is my soapbox moment.

James Brady was the White House press secretary.

He was shot as well.

And so I wanted to qualify everything that I say about Reagan with the fact that

James Brady was the predecessor to Larry Speaks.

Larry Speaks was the press secretary when the AIDS crisis started.

Now, I had an uncle who died of AIDS in 1988, and his death almost certainly could have been prevented if Reagan just fucking listened.

So,

if I sound pointedly glib about an attempt on Reagan's life, it's because I am.

And

like, this is directly correlated to the appointment of Larry Speaks.

And obviously, Larry Speaks was just a mouthpiece for the man himself.

I sent you a little clip of Larry Speaks talking about AIDS on behalf of Reagan, which we do not have to include, but I just thought it was vile and worth sharing.

Yeah.

Yes, just like listen to him.

Let me, I'm going to play this.

Okay.

Corollary.

Okay.

We love a corollary here.

The show can be called

Corollary the Musical.

Okay.

I'm playing it.

Lester's beginning to circle now.

He's moving in front.

Go ahead.

It's the Center for Disease Control and Vladimir.

Look, did I ask a question right now?

An estimated 300,000 people have been exposed to AIDS, which should be transmitted through saliva.

Will the President, as Commander-in-Chief, take steps to protect armed forces, food, and medical services from

AIDS patients or those who run the risk of spreading AIDS in the same manner that they forbid typhoid fever people from being involved in the health or food services for the world?

Well, could you say

is the President concerned about this subject, Larry?

That it seems to have evoked so much jocular reaction here.

It isn't only the jocks, Lester.

Has he's worn off water pluses?

No, but I mean, is he going to do anything, Larry?

Lester, I have not heard him express anything.

You mean he has

expressed no opinion about this epidemic?

The amount of giggling in the background

is astounding.

Have you been checked?

I have one

question, one follow-up.

Since he invited one Nobel Prize winner

over to the White House, will he invite Solzonets?

When will he invite Solzonets?

I don't know.

Didn't we invite him once?

And just like the making yucks about it's not only jocks.

Ha ha.

Oh my god.

Yeah.

It's also fascinating too that he's being asked about it in the capacity of are the armed forces afraid of AIDS patients trying to transmit AIDS to them, which is surely the most pressing concern.

Bioweapon.

Although for Reagan, it was probably the most

framing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And even then.

So that was the person who replaced James Brady after this shooting.

Yeah.

So good job, Hinkley.

One step forward and two steps back.

Exactly.

I'm going to sound a little careless about this.

So, should we talk about Hinkley?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Let's please talk about Hinkley.

Because who is this guy who happens to be in the neighborhood and tries to pull off an assassination?

And boy, does he not manage it?

He is a lonely street white guy in his 20s,

which is really bizarre.

Yeah.

And he's obsessed with a girl.

And

so he watched Taxi Driver

in his,

I don't want to say formative years.

He tried to be a musician for like, he literally went to New York, couldn't find a hotel room that he could afford.

The traffic was too much.

So he's like, I give up on my dream of being a musician one day.

Like,

he could have used some good parenting at that point.

And he's like, what, like 20 at this?

Yeah, he's young.

Yeah.

Around his assassination attempt.

But so he is kind of drifting around, watches Taxi Driver and sees it like 16 times or something in the theater and just gets hyper-fixated on Jodi Foster, who at the time was a minor.

Which is also so weird because it's a movie about a creepy scary man.

And like

at any point, it's about it.

And also it's a movie about a creepy scary man who is himself fixated on Jodi Foster and you would just kind of think that at a certain point you'd be like hmm maybe I don't actually want to follow the exact same path as this guy It's like the American Psycho thing.

It's like

half of the audience is going to miss that this is like.

God, you're right.

Because men love taxi driver and they love the film where you're like, wait, but do you get this is about a man like completely decompensating and how it's like bad?

That's the thing about films, you know, it's they can say they can communicate all kinds of things, but that doesn't mean people have to understand them.

Well, you'd have to be so ham-fisted to just like give on a silver platter that we don't want to be Travis Bickle.

Like, that's not aspirational, my guy.

Right.

Well, you would have to have Scorsese come out at the end and be like, hi, I'm Artie Scorsese.

Remember me?

I was the guy in the taxi at the beginning.

I was talking to the taxi driver.

Anyway, don't do this.

Like a John Hughes moment.

So by the time he gets obsessed with her, she is just starting at Yale.

He went out to LA for a while and was doing his, you know, dirty LA street kid thing as he gets obsessed with her.

Then he decides, like, I got to go back and be closer to her in New Haven.

So he moves back to the Northeast and starts like calling her.

And so there are some recordings of those phone calls.

And she's very, oh my god.

This is why I thought of this part now.

Like she's so

firm but composed.

She's like, man, is it you again?

Like,

you understand I can't talk to you because I don't know you, right?

Like, she's nice, but she's rational.

I think if I were a famous person in college at that time, I'd be like, fuck off, bro.

Like, leave me alone.

Yeah.

But she's very measured.

And I guess she has a lot of practice because she's been famous like since she was at least, you know, I mean, she was, she was in movies as a small child.

So she's just like...

I want to say like nine-ish.

Yeah.

She was, well, and I think she, she did like, I mean, not that you would be known for this exactly, but I think she did a copper tone campaign when she was like two.

You know, she's been working since she was a baby, basically.

But, you know, that doesn't give you...

the, I don't know, the psychological strength to not unleash your rage at at somebody.

Right, yeah.

You feel like she's getting her like Clary Starling practice that she's going to use in the silence of the lambs in years and years.

Like, pretty formative, but also like a little, a hair of discomfort that is grounding in her humanity, you know?

Right.

You can tell that she's not enjoying this or she's not like, you know, grandstanding or anything, but also that she's not going to back down.

Like, she appreciates the gravity of the situation.

And I feel like with somebody who was as unstable as Hinkley was at the time, obviously he was ready and willing to take a life and he was living in delusion land.

Yeah.

It's really good that she didn't get too aggressive because I could see rejection having turned really ugly with a case like this.

Or, you know, him deciding to show up at Yale instead.

That's what I mean, yeah.

Okay, so he, so he fits a type that we recognize.

Yeah, it is certainly a type.

And I would say, when I was reading about it, it was funny how much the word parasocial kept coming to mind, except that that was, that was a weirder phenomenon back then.

Like to think that you know somebody and you have a relationship with somebody and a loyalty to them just like totally unilaterally becomes really common down the road.

But back then, it was almost like that in and of itself was proof of insanity.

And I think we slowly have gotten to a place where it's more common.

I don't know what to do with that information.

It just came to mind.

You're right.

And then it's become like a whole sort of form of like job creation and economics.

Yeah.

And I feel like there's sort of there's a degree of like illusion that you expect people to understand they're partaking in that some number of people won't understand

and will take literally.

And that's always going to

be dangerous.

Exactly.

And obviously, when I say parasocial relationships are more common now, now, people aren't taking it to this level.

That's not what I mean.

He obviously went to the nth degree, but like it was really funny to read all this symptomology that came out at trial.

And I don't know that we would all recognize that as being so common nowadays, but how about that?

And they talked about like he had no close friendships and thus nobody to ground him in reality.

And I'm like, well, that also sounds really familiar.

Yeah.

Well, and we also now have like, you know, whether or not you believe in the concept of the male loneliness epidemic, there's certainly a lot of incentives to sell them propaganda about how they'll never be loved until they buy all these, you know, protein supplements and take all these courses and learn how to, you know, buy a course where you learn how to become a magnate from someone who shouldn't have to sell all these courses on being a magnate if they're really a magnate.

If they are

a life coach without any certification, but like they're going to help you.

Alpha male podcasters, exactly.

I hate to bring podcasts into this, but

I mean,

the podcasts don't kill people.

It's the parasocial.

Joe Rogan kills people.

Joe Rogan kills people.

That's punchier.

Yes.

Okay.

So, like, yeah, he develops this fixation.

Weirdly enough, he was really upset about John Lennon getting assassinated.

Like, that, he lists that as a turning point.

John, listen to yourself.

Come on.

You're so upset about that assassination.

You have to attempt America's next big assassination.

The assassination of the summer, if you will.

Yeah, like he bought Catcher in the Rye.

He went to a vigil outside the Dakota.

Wow.

And then he said three months later, he did his.

So I didn't realize how proximate in time you were, but it really was a catalyst.

Which also, if you're an American, you have to have, you know, a certain number of people had to have been like, oh my God, are we doing this again?

Is it 1968?

Are we going to have so many assassinations now?

Yes.

I thought the same, I mean, and like the phase of hijacking, because he also thought,

he's like, maybe I'll try that.

And he actually went to the airport in Tennessee with a handgun.

See, this is what I love.

I love a criminal who can't get it off the ground.

He's just like, maybe, no,

no, no parking in New York.

Never mind.

Never mind about the music career.

And just like desperately influenced by trends.

He's like, oh, hijacking.

Shit, maybe I'll do that.

Yeah.

Which, like, for people who don't know, in the 70s for a while, like, people were hijacking planes like all over the place.

You don't hear about it anymore now because, you know, now the last one we remember, they flew it into the World Trade Center and it was a tragedy that changed the world forever.

But in the 70s,

probably your dad could just like hijack a plane for a little while and like, you know, jump out of it with a bunch of money he stole or something like that.

That's the best case scenario.

Very few get hurt on that one.

But, like, yeah, like, he just traips into the airport in Tennessee, and I think there was some fluky thing that ended up getting him caught.

Like, it wasn't a routine screening.

And then they just fined him $50

because he said

it's a target practice.

They're like, no guns in the airport.

Go back to Swarthmore, young man.

Right?

Sorry to Swarthmore.

I don't know that there's any connection.

I just, you know, it's where I imagine some guy who can't get it together would go.

So, yeah.

And then ironically, I did note that Reagan's reaction to the Lennon shooting was saying, like, handgun control is not the answer.

So that is another little bit of irony.

Exactly.

Yeah.

No, this is not a classy show.

Of course, now I have a mental image of Reagan being reached for comment in the hospital going, handgun control is still not the answer.

You You know what?

I bet you're not far off.

So,

yeah, Dayav, he walks by this place and he just, it's pretty close quarters with everybody leaving this AFL-CIO

Teamster talk.

He was like, hello, Teamsters.

I'm going to ruin your life.

Have fun with that.

Excuse me.

Yeah.

And he gets, he shoots four people, all of whom are associated with the president.

So yeah, you get that.

And does he just kind of open fire kind of on the group as Reagan is being ushered into his car, essentially?

Yeah.

And it sounds like, because he specifically said he did not aim and

that that was evidence of his lack of clarity of mind.

Do you believe that?

Because

I do believe that, that he just kind of is like, oh, what do I do now?

I guess I'll shoot this gun now or something.

I do believe it.

And I think that like the lack of coherence to the the whole plan, the lack of coherence to this piece makes sense.

Yeah.

And that he's just kind of going around looking for something big to do, but it doesn't really matter what the thing is and that he hasn't thought through.

Yeah.

Because Travis Bickel had a mission.

And then I guess we get into the question of what is the difference between insanity and poor planning.

Well, kind of, and stupidity.

Like, yeah, that one.

Because that's what I thought with Winnie Ruth Judd.

Like, don't put limbs in a hat box, but also maybe you're just dumb.

Sorry.

Right.

Like, is this a bad choice or is this a choice of someone like disconnected from reality?

And that's very hard to determine with some people, honestly.

And what should affect culpability?

Because if you get down to it, like, obviously, anybody who does a crime of a certain caliber is by definition not mentally healthy.

Yeah, that's what I think.

And I, and, you know, this gets complicated, but I don't think that like, yeah, I think premeditated murder is, like, by definition, you know if you're not motivated by like a huge amount of money or something like that or like principles that are really clearly like a yeah I'm thinking of like Franz Ferdinand was not necessarily

they at least knew what they were doing and right it was the plan but yeah that if but murder as the sort of as the crime and the motive right and then we get into this difficult thing where like there's this sort of core belief, I think,

in American history and American masculinity that violence is a sane thing to do.

Right, right.

There's times when violence is acceptable, but there's a sort of core tenet of American masculinity that violence is just like a nice hobby.

And I don't think that that's a sane belief system.

But if you ask a lot of people, they'll say that it is.

Yeah, like it lives on that spectrum of the biggest con that men committed is convincing women that anger isn't an emotion sort of thing.

Like

that violence is about the most emotional thing you can do.

And I feel like that kind of connects to our point that, like, it's a very mentally unhealthy thing to let violence control your action.

Yeah.

And yet,

we don't say every person is legally mentally ill

for the purposes of the defense.

Nor should we.

I mean, that would be a crazy way to let people,

we would all be dead.

In a matter of speaking.

Right.

And then it's, you know, with any, with all of this, it comes down to a lot of individual choices kind of at in a in a trial capacity, it seems like.

Yeah, but so, okay, so he's arrested, like, immediately.

He doesn't get shot because everybody is

because he's just standing around, I presume, because he didn't think she had.

Well, it's so close quarters.

He thought he would get shot.

He was like, I was prepared to just, like, die.

That probably would have been convenient for his mental state.

Like, he didn't have a plan in life.

He was just going to go out in a blaze of glory.

So, really,

it seems like a sort of

that there's just like a lot going on in his head and he's fastened it all to this one thing he's going to do.

Yeah.

And I think like a vacuum of other purposes and influences that then his mental illness filled with Jodi Foster.

But also like if it wasn't her, it would have been Christy McNichol.

It's at a certain point you're just a woman who existed and some guy came along and here we are.

And got obsessed with you.

So they actually played taxi driver at the trial.

Oh my god, how?

Like

from my understanding, they played the entirety of the movie for the jury.

That's incredible.

Like imagine you're just like trying.

I mean, I guess it would be like useful information, but like that is a long and intense movie.

Yeah.

Man.

And apparently like a big part of it was the defense using this as evidence, like watch him watch the movie.

Wow.

And he was just fixated.

Yeah, I mean, it is a good movie, to be fair.

It's not like it's boring or something.

Right, right.

I mean, also, like, what a weird week to be like Sybil Shepard or something.

You know, you're like, yeah, I don't know.

Apparently, the jury is watching that movie I did a few years ago to determine if this presidential would-be assassin is insane or not.

Anyway, all in a day's work, right?

Yeah, you can't buy publicity like that.

No, and poor Jodie Foster,

she did not have to appear in person, but she gave a deposition that was taped.

And that also went a ways in proving his insanity because she said in the deposition that they did not have a relationship and she did not know him.

And he had a little bit of an outburst at that

and had to be removed from the courtroom.

Yeah.

But so the test that they used at that time in the DC circuit and the federal courts, which is where he was tried, was this kind of middle ground test, which is the model penal code test.

Again, if you're note-taking, the standard there is that at the time of the act, you're suffering from mental illness and because of that, lacked capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of your conduct or lacked the capacity to conform your conduct to the law's requirements.

So it's that last piece that's a little more permissive.

Okay.

That it's like you basically can't control yourself and you can't fit yourself into law-abiding society's norms.

Which is interesting because if you want to assassinate the president in order to impress Cody Foster, you understand that you want her to be impressed by the level of your wrongdoing.

Yeah, that's a great point.

But the desire to do it also arguably shows that you don't understand the wrong, like...

I don't know, like the true reality of the wrongness of it, only that it would be impressive.

I do find it really interesting.

Yeah.

I think if they had had just the McNaughton test, which is what they ended up going back to and making a little stricter after, then it just would have been the right or wrong element and there wouldn't have been this, like,

or you're so mentally ill that you can't conform your conduct to legal norms.

Right.

Which in that case is like, maybe you understand all kinds of things, but you can't

implement that knowledge.

Yeah.

Which I think is more useful.

Yeah.

it could get a little permissive if we do think about it.

Like, imagine a world of Hinkley-esque men who are just like, I can't stop.

I don't have to imagine it.

It's on Reddit.

I know.

Imagine if you can.

I know it sounds over the top.

You have to, I guess, draw a line.

somewhere and then the question of where the somewhere is ends up being a little subjective because I do truly believe, right, if you look at our president, 45-47, 45-slash-47, like, I don't think Trump actually is capable of making better choices than he is right now, right?

At this point, certainly not.

Yeah.

Well, that too, yeah.

And like, I know that he knows he's doing horrible things and is doing them on purpose and that the cruelty is the point, but also, like, has he ever had the capacity to be less of a horrible narcissist?

I don't think so, but that doesn't mean he's not criminally liable, you know?

So, like, yeah.

And I think that brings us to a great point, which is kind of like the philosophical underpinning of the whole thing, which is like, what is the goal of punishment?

Yeah, because why bother having a legal system when there's such a pain?

Yeah.

And also, like, what is the goal of incarceration?

Because if you are found not guilty, which people will disagree on, it seems.

Yeah, boy, yeah.

But it's not like he was walking around because of the not guilty verdict.

Like, he was incarcerated,

but it was in a mental health facility.

And so it's like, if that's what we're talking about the distinction for, maybe I don't mind the more permissive definition as much, because does that just mean that we put the Trump-esque thinkers in a treatment facility?

Yeah, and now they all have to play tennis with each other until they die.

Yeah.

Like that's not release them back on the streets to do this again.

Yeah.

God, imagine all of them just like in a secure facility forced to play risk with each other.

I mean, I don't want to work there, but it would be

nice in ways.

But we could pay the people who do work there really well.

Lots of money.

Tell me about this verdict because were people kind of thinking as this was going on, like, oh, it'll be fine.

He'll definitely be convicted.

He did try to kill the president after all.

Or was there a sense of like, I don't know, he does seem to have an awful lot of lawyers.

He didn't have that many lawyers.

Oh, he didn't.

Okay.

No,

they just called a ton of psychiatrists.

Oh, right.

They just had 27 witnesses to make up for it.

Yeah.

Like, the witness balance there shows that everybody assumed, yeah, this guy tried to kill the president in broad daylight.

On camera, like there's footage of it.

You can watch it right now if you wanted to.

Yeah, and like, not that a good motive would have made a difference, but like, for why?

Like, because Joe D.

Foster.

Right.

Like, what if he was like, well, I'm very upset about the trade deficit or something.

Right.

Or like, maybe if I had done it because of AIDS,

there's at least cause and effect.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the inevitable Luigi Mangioni parallel of it all, right?

Where like, great point.

Yeah.

Right.

To me, it's like, it makes complete sense that like at this, at this point in time, we had, and I know that there's like plenty of people, plenty of conservatives who are like, it's terrible.

It's terrible to be glamorizing an assassin.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But guess how like everyone I know and everyone who I sort of see online and like in the sort of world that I'm in was immediately just like, protect our boy.

And I mean, like, where is that indignation when people die every day for no reason because of these companies?

So like, that's, yeah,

imbalanced.

Republicans were super upset, obviously.

And did this shock people?

Was this like kind of like an OJ moment?

Or like, did people see it coming?

I don't know that I would put it to that level.

Yeah, I mean they didn't have it live on Oprah.

Nothing's at that level.

Yeah, and the tricky thing here is like he definitely is not, or at least at that point, he was not well.

He certainly was whatever you would consider to be quote unquote insane to use the term of art.

Like

in that sense, it's different than OJ because it's not that anybody was saying he didn't do it.

Right, right.

And that it's not, you know, based on do you believe that he did it or not and that huge cultural divide.

Like everyone agrees on what happened in this case.

Okay.

Yeah, it's an affirmative defense.

It's like, yes, I did this, but I can't

be carcerally responsible for my actions.

Like the punishment is a different form.

And I realize that this also more or less coincides with the Willowbrook expose.

And I think that that's not an accident.

What is that?

So Geraldo Rivera.

Oh, boy.

Yep.

Geraldo, welcome.

Sit down.

Still there.

Yeah.

Still hanging out.

Some hot pictures of him online in his 70s, if anyone's looking for them.

But so he did this expose in the 70s about a mental health facility, an asylum.

because it really was, this marked the end of the era of asylums.

And it was called Willowbrook.

And it really exposed the inhumane treatment.

Because interestingly, Reagan also, like, the Reagan administration created a policy that also deinstitutionalized a lot of people, right?

Ironically.

Yeah, so I think this doesn't necessarily affect, you know, Hinkley specifically, but I'm just thinking about like the shift in this country from mental health institutions to

incredibly expensive places.

Yeah, like that they don't really exist, but the people still

exist who are potentially dangerous to themselves and others, so they can't be free to deal with their mental health until or unless they're better.

But now we don't have places dedicated to that.

Like the fix was fixing the institutions.

But like you don't want to go back to the past where you have people being forcibly institutionalized and

ending up in abusive places that they can't leave.

But now we just put them in prison.

Right.

But now it's like there is no place to go if you're a threat to yourself or your family if you can't afford it.

So we don't even call them mentally ill.

So I feel like that, yeah, that coincided with the reforms after Hinckley, which basically got rid of a lot of the options of pleading some version of insanity.

So now you either can't assert it and/or there's no other facility that you can go alternatively.

And I think that those kind of dovetailed and worked together to create prisons as the mental health facility.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what that also means is that like if you're someone who has someone who is a danger to you in your life or who poses a threat or who, you know, is

stalking you or behaving threateningly toward you, it's very difficult.

to know how to handle that for many reasons, but partly because if you have any, if you care about that person at all, which frequently is the case, then like you don't want them to go to prison as their only option or for something completely terrible to happen to them.

Or even a loved one, like who's having a mental health crisis that gets to a point that you can't physically or emotionally handle it.

Yeah, where you are not able to take care of them, but you want someone to, as opposed to, you know, the only care that exists being some form of punishment.

It's uh, yeah, yeah, It's not good.

It's not great.

So like, long story short, on post-Hinckley reforms, there was a congressional act that made the standard higher and also got rid of some of the expert witness options.

And some states went even further.

So if you're familiar with Eileen Warnos, the gal who Monster was based on.

I sure did watch cable TV growing up.

Yeah.

Heck yeah, me too.

Eileen Wornos is fascinating for many reasons, but one is because when she was, you know, big in the news in the 90s, everyone was like, she's the first female serial killer.

And it's like, she's actually

one of the first female serial killers to, you know, become a household name because she killed men.

outside the home, but women have been quietly being serial killers, often killing, you know, children or their patients or the elderly or just people in their care for such a long time.

And so many of them don't get caught.

So, you know, that's all.

Hers was arguably like

a lot of them were self-defense adjacent.

And

the point of connecting it to this, she did not plead insanity, but all these strictures that states put in place after Hinckley, and whether they're directly related or not,

it's been a couple decades now.

But in Florida, where she was tried, if you don't plead insanity, you can't introduce any mental health evidence.

So it becomes this like, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

So it's like, if you don't throw yourself into this trap that really would control your legal strategy and any testimony that you would give,

then you can't add any evidence of what your state of mind was or what you might have been suffering.

And in her case, that was really key.

Right.

Because like the story basically is that she was a survivor of a lot of sexual abuse and then was working as a sex worker and

killed some number of men.

And to me, one of the interesting questions has always been like,

how many of them just actually did have it coming?

Because I can see a scenario where all of them did, honestly.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: If you look at it from a sort of battered woman syndrome adjacent defense,

that like her nervous system was super heightened when it came to male sexual partners doing XYZ.

And here's mental health evidence of why.

Like you couldn't do that in Florida at the time.

Yeah, and that's at least an interesting potential line of defense.

And to not have that available to you also seems bummed.

I hate to use the word, but problematic, yeah.

Yeah.

Better than my word.

I like them both.

Yeah.

But it's this interesting thing of like you let you lose the ability to express the reality of the client's mental situation if you have that kind of restriction.

Right.

It's really bizarre.

And I know you have talked about like junk science evidence and some of the traps adjacent to that.

And I feel like this fits into that whole constellation of what you can say, what you can't say, the lack of uniformity of what rules we're working with at any place in time is really tricky.

And then, so a lot of states now have actually gotten rid of, not a lot of states, some states have gotten rid of the insanity defense altogether there's also like an advent of this new thing that's guilty but mentally ill which then you still go to prison that's just like when someone's like how are you doing you're like well i feel guilty but also mentally ill so that asterisk yeah yeah

i don't know so basically like if you get that

in your verdict, you go to prison, but then you get to see somebody for a screening to see if you need inpatient care, which I don't know, at that point, maybe it's 601.

Right.

And then, like, what kind of inpatient care are you going to get within the prison system seems like the option that you're left with.

It's also, I mean, this makes me think of this, you know, the 1970s death penalty moratorium.

And my understanding is that a big part of the rationale for, was that like Furman v.

Georgia or something like that?

Or the stated rationale was that we have to, like, if we have the death penalty being implemented like differently for different reasons across different states and for different defendants, then like, how can we swear to the constitutionality of something that's being applied in such a kind of random and arbitrary manner?

And it feels like you're kind of saying the same thing.

Wait, you just pulled a thread on the whole system.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And obviously, if you take it a little bigger, there's the whole states' rights thing, which drives me nuts.

And it is the rallying cry of like every unjust cause ever.

Right.

And states' rights historically is like code for the states' rights to be racist.

Yeah,

finish the sentence.

Yeah.

For better or worse on the insanity defense, we had both federal and state responses.

So, like, everybody was really whipped up into the same frenzy

at the state and federal level.

And I know you and I have talked about like how infrequently those knee-jerk legislative responses tend to address the problem that they're knee-jerking to.

Yeah.

And I think this is a good example.

I do understand how it would be shocking.

Like I imagine if you're like a random citizen, there's been this trial of this guy who attempted on purpose to assassinate the president.

And now you're hearing that he's not going to prison.

And also, I'm sure, are being told implicitly and also out loud by, you know, all the news sources for whom this is like a huge bombshell that, like, maybe he'll be released at any time.

We don't know.

He's not going to prison.

We don't have a sentencing guideline.

I'm sure if anybody wanted to rile up their voter base, that that would be the thing to say.

And so I'm sure many did say it.

That, like, do you want to live in this country?

I feel like I have like Pentecostal preacher cadence in the back of my head, you know, like, and I, just the other day, I read news of a man who tried to shoot a president, and he may be out of the slammer in six weeks.

Absolutely.

And we know those guys loved Reagan.

So like, of course, that was the word on the street.

And then like for the record, Hinkley was in essence incarcerated.

Like he was not free to leave the facility.

And every like bit of freedom that he got back was a court hearing.

So it's like if he wanted to be allowed to go to an art therapy thing once a month, it was a whole hearing and everybody came out of the woodwork and were like, this guy tried to kill Reagan.

Well, and also, from what I remember, because this has, you know, been such a long story, but that like sometime in the past 10 years, he was

whatever the equivalent of parole is.

And of course, that was a huge story.

And that the terms of his release meant that he had to stay a certain distance away from like any ex-presidents, which is funny.

But then you think about the fact that he was, I think, in the custody of his mother who lived in Virginia.

And you're like, well, there have to be kind of a lot of presidents around, actually.

You're absolutely right.

And it actually was an issue because his mom was in like a pseudo-retirement community, if memory serves.

And it, it abutted with like a golf course and who loves to golf, former presidents love to golf.

Yes.

So there actually was a question of like, oh, god damn it.

Like

how do we make this work?

But he was released like 2022, I want to say.

And a lot of people pitched a fit about it, but he was in inpatient, essentially incarcerated for 35 years.

And he really, like, the fact that he

now has comments turned off on his YouTube channel, but he didn't for a long while.

And the fact that he fielded what I'm sure he got

in the comment section and didn't lose his mind to me is pretty good evidence that he is stabilized.

Yeah.

Well, and also it's like,

and this gets into the question of, as you were saying, what is the purpose of incarceration or what's the purpose of institutionalization in this case?

And I think that if we're going to pretend to be the country that we like pretending to be and to have the values that we like to pretend to have, we have to at least go along with the claim that we do want people to heal if they possibly can.

Do we want someone to be able to live a nice life when they are no longer a threat?

Or can that only happen when they have repaid their debt to society?

And if so, how do they do it?

And who is society?

And is it only repaid when every single person thinks that they've suffered enough?

Because it can't be that, because there's always going to be someone somewhere who thinks it's not enough.

Aaron Powell, and those people are motivated by, I would say,

non-utilitarian motives and things that we wouldn't want ruling or sentencing.

Yeah.

This all comes down to sort of what we imagine government to be for, which I realize there's a lot of difference of opinion on that.

But I feel like to me, this gets into the area of like, as cynical as I believe myself to have become, I'm really not.

I'm really just a cockeyed optimist underneath.

And I truly

write.

And like, and that's a great thing to be.

And I, and I do believe that, like, just because we, you know, we know partly from being students of history that there are times when this can happen

and has happened, that the law can,

you know, not just try and prevent things from happening or try and, you know, contain

people who pose a threat to themselves or others or to sort of, you know, that the law is not just an instrument of control, but can also we can use it to try and conceptualize better things.

Yeah, and how to um

how to facilitate people potentially becoming who they can be rather than who they've been forced to become.

And that it's, you know, you can't expect it to work all the time or even a lot of the time, but that the potential to to bring out what people are capable of in the best way is also worth trying to enshrine, I think.

Those are beautiful points, and I really think it's the only way to be if we want to move forward at all.

Because

fear just rots your brain.

Yeah, literally.

I could do this all day, and someday soon we will.

Where can people enjoy some of your work?

And also, since we're putting this out in August, what's a flavor of August that you recommend?

Find me.

I'm at MKZJoyBrennan on most of the social media.

I'm mostly on Instagram.

And I also have a website that's mkzjoybrennan.com.

And

the flavor of August.

See, you're asking somebody with like, I'm autism spectrum, and I...

I'm one who like, I eat about three things.

Okay, night.

What are your three things you if you want to I just found these like great frozen yogurt mint chocolate chip ice cream pop things.

Nice.

And I ate like three of them yesterday.

So I'm sure that I'll keep up until August because I'm a creature of habit.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Some people need to be reminded of ice cream.

Does that answer the question or did you mean it in a fun esoteric way and I went for ice cream?

No, I mean it however you want.

I mean, I've been talking up sweet corn.

I think sweet corn is like perfect.

Corn is so present that it's easy to forget that like you can just like add a little corn.

Add a little corn to your life.

Add a little corn to your life.

I made ramen today and I threw in a bunch of sweet corn and like you're crazy.

My god is that good.

I am crazy.

Summer girls.

I'll go to a movie on a weekday.

I'm crazy.

Oh man.

Gotta get out of here.

Execution.

That was beautiful.

Thank you so much.

I'll see you for a bonus shortly.

And I can't wait.

Oh, heck yeah.

And that is our episode.

Thank you so much for listening.

And thank you, of course, to our guest, Mackenzie Joy Brennan.

You can find her at MKZJoy Brennan on the social media network of your choice.

And her website is mkzjoybrennon.com.

Thank you to Miranda Zickler for editing and producing.

Thank you to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and producing.

We'll see you next time.