Table of Contents for Judging Insanity, Punishing Difference
Introduction: Introduction
The Introduction illustrates the legal challenges faced by mentally ill capital defendants seeking criminal exculpation or a mitigation of their sentence in Texas courts. It argues that although psycho-legal theorists have long identified such difficulties, existing literature has provided a decontextualized view of mental incapacity claims that takes for granted the paradigms and categories that psychiatrists and legal actors use to make sense of defendants' criminal conduct. The Introduction then briefly illustrates how the book will counteract this tendency, outlines its central arguments and contributions, and provides some reflections on the generalizability of the findings beyond Texas's borders. Finally, the Introduction describes the archival sources used in the historical investigation and explains the book's periodization and chronological organization.
1.Heredity, Environment, and the Doctrine of Civilization
Chapter 1 examines the emergence of hereditarian and environmental explanations of insanity and criminality in forensic psychiatric publications and the moral framework within which early twentieth-century psychiatrists operated. The chapter identifies a tension between psychiatrists' scientific aspirations, as reflected in their efforts to identify the origins of mental illness and criminal behavior in organic pathologies and genetic defects, and the value-laden language they used to describe mentally ill offenders' personalities and conduct. Specifically, the chapter argues that early twentieth-century psychiatrists were powerfully influenced by Darwinian evolutionism, "race science," and a puritan work ethic that prompted them to recast male offenders (particularly if African American or a Catholic immigrant) as genetically and morally inferior, devoid of "self-control" and ambition, and therefore more likely to succumb to their "lower instincts" and impulses.
2.Biology, Insanity, and the Criminal Courts
Chapter 2 turns to the ways in which psychiatrists and lay witnesses used evidence of heredity, brain damage, syphilis, and feeblemindedness to support or undermine defendants' insanity claims in individual cases. The chapter identifies a mismatch between the scientific theories developed in the psychiatric literature and the daily practice of expert witnesses, arguing that this mismatch resulted from psychiatry's methodological limitations when confronted with individual cases and from the difficulty in reconciling psychiatric explanations of criminal behavior with the legal questions experts were required to answer in Texas courtrooms. Furthermore, the chapter shows that psychiatric theorists, expert witnesses, and legal actors drew from the white Protestant cultural paradigm to associate particular psychiatric conditions and antisocial behaviors with the personality types, habits, and lifestyles that deviated from the ideal models of masculinity and femininity of the time and that were commonly associated with America's "social outcasts."
3.Psychoanalysis, the Insanity Defense, and the Family-Centered Ideology
Chapter 3 analyzes the diffusion of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories in the United States, the relationship between Freudian psychoanalysis and the insanity defense, and the emergence of a family-centered ideology that saw criminal behavior as the result of pathological family relationships in early childhood. The chapter argues that the new family-centered ideology, along with Freud's critique of Victorian parental education, sparked a lively debate between psychoanalysts and criminal justice officials who advocated for more tolerant parenting styles and those who championed a return to strict parental discipline to control "troubled youth." Moreover, the chapter suggests that the transition from biological to family-centered explanations of criminal behavior, along with the postwar demise of "race science" and eugenics, prompted American forensic psychiatrists to abandon earlier descriptions of blacks as morally "primitive" and genetically "inferior" and to turn their attention to the "pathological" and "criminogenic" effects of blacks' parenting styles.
4.Psychoanalysis and the Construction of the Criminal Psychopath
Chapter 4 examines the ways in which psychoanalytic theory and the cultural changes that accompanied its dissemination affected psychiatrists' framing of criminal psychopathy. The chapter shows that, in the two decades following World War II, rejections of the traditional family values of the 1950s, challenges to the traditional code of sexual morality, and the emergence of a new culture of mass media prompted American psychoanalysts to frame male criminal psychopaths as "emotionally immature" individuals, "latent homosexuals," and/or "egocentric narcissists," both in the theoretical literature and in courtroom interactions. Through these labeling practices, psychoanalysts associated the male criminal psychopath with the personality characteristics and sexual inclinations that white middle-class Americans perceived as most threatening to its ideal model of manhood, turning the defendant into a subject deserving of absolute moral condemnation and, if necessary, penal neutralization.
5.The "New" Scientific Psychiatry, Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Future Dangerousness
Chapter 5 focuses on the last quarter of the twentieth century, a period that experienced a revival of biological explanations of mental illness and criminality and a regular use of the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (APD) to label capital defendants in Texas courts. The chapter proposes that during this period, trial actors were strongly influenced by the culture of fear, the individualist notion of criminal responsibility, and the racialized depiction of dangerousness that were shaping criminal justice policy at the time, urging them to interpret defendants' offenses as acts of deliberate choice stemming from their inherently wicked natures. In particular, the chapter illustrates how state experts and prosecutors leveraged the diagnosis of APD to depict capital defendants as evil, manipulative, and irredeemable subjects, supporting public perceptions of the criminal as a monster and predator, always ready to attack the next prey and therefore in need of permanent incapacitation.
6.The Abused and Neglected as a "Continuing Threat to Society"
Chapter 6 examines trial strategies used by the defense and the prosecution in cases involving defendants with histories of child abuse and neglect. The chapter argues that, with few exceptions, Texas defense attorneys failed to present compelling mitigation stories that would do justice to defendants' difficult childhoods and family histories. Moreover, even in cases where the defense presented strong mitigating evidence, Texas prosecutors exploited the punitive cultural climate of the late twentieth century, along with the Texas capital punishment statute's focus on future dangerousness, to turn evidence of mental illness and child abuse into an aggravating factor at sentencing. Finally, starting from the analysis of two cases of ethnic minority defendants, the chapter shows how historically entrenched racist stereotypes linking African Americans and Hispanics with violence exacerbated the prejudicial effects of this prosecutorial strategy, further encouraging the imposition of death verdicts on mentally ill defendants belonging to these ethnic groups.
Epilogue: Forensic Psychiatry and Trial Practices in the Twenty-First Century
The Epilogue examines how recent developments in neuroscience and behavioral genetics have shaped trial practices in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It shows that, although criminal courts have become increasingly receptive to neurological and genetic evidence in the sentencing phase of capital proceedings, many of the problems encountered in twentieth-century death penalty trials (e.g., the clash between scientific and folk-psychological views of human behavior and the attribution biases stemming from the dispositional view of mental illness and crime) continue to undermine the exculpatory and mitigating potential of the evidence presented. To overcome these obstacles, the Epilogue proposes that defense experts should translate scientific evidence into the folk-psychological language of the criminal law, use evidence of neuroplasticity to challenge the image of incorrigibility advanced by the prosecution, and provide a more nuanced and comprehensive account of defendants' difficult life stories.