Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
Nobody's Child
- A Tragedy, a Trial, and a History of the Insanity Defense
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
£0.00 for first 30 days
Nobody's Child
Buy Now for £12.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Summary
A powerful and humane exploration of the history of the "insanity defense", through the story of one poignant case.
When a three-year-old child was found with a head wound and other injuries, it looked like an open-and-shut case of second-degree murder. Psychologist and Attorney Susan Vinocour agreed to evaluate the defendant, the child's mentally ill and impoverished grandmother, to determine whether she was competent to stand trial. Even if she had caused the child's death, had she realized at the time that her actions were wrong, or was she legally "insane"?
What followed was anything but an open-and-shut case. Nobody's Child traces the legal definition of "insanity" back to its inception in Victorian Britain nearly 200 years ago, from when our understanding of the human mind was in its infancy, to today, when questions of race, class, and ability so often determine who is legally "insane" and who is criminally guilty. Vinocour explains how "competency" and "insanity" are creatures of a legal system, not of psychiatric reality, and how, in criminal law, the insanity defense has too often been a luxury of the rich and white.
Listeners also enjoyed...
