Randy Singer: By reason of insanity

Quinn reached down and grabbed the poster board leaning against the jury rail. He placed it on the easel, displaying large photos of Annie's face after the second domestic disturbance call. "You remember the testimony about this 911 call," he said. His voice stayed composed, but he felt his blood pressure rising. "Richard made some calls of his own before the police arrived. I'll give him this much-the man had connections. He begged Annie to forgive him. He promised to get counseling. The police officers, instead of arresting Richard, agreed to let the couple work it out." Quinn shook his head, disgusted. "We saw how well that worked."

He sensed the jury was tiring. They had been at it for three straight weeks. Rehashing all the evidence now would probably do more harm than good.

"And you know from the testimony that it wasn't just the physical abuse," Quinn continued. "Hofstetter flirted with other women right under Annie's nose-purposefully humiliating her. He threatened to turn her in for a younger model, a smarter model. For her thirty-fifth birthday, he scheduled Annie an appointment with a plastic surgeon.

"It's a wonder she didn't snap earlier-what Dr. Mancini referred to as a psychotic break. The prosecution says she should have worked through the system. She should have called family protective services. She should have filed for divorce.

"But you don't think rationally when your thirteen-year-old daughter says that her stepfather touched her private parts. Maybe you can take your husband's abuse yourself, but you can't let him hurt your daughter the way your father hurt you. Your past comes rushing back in full Technicolor-those nights you begged God to make it stop. You thought you had worked through the painful memories, but you had only caged them in for a while. And now your abusive husband feeds the beast every time he abuses you, every time he humiliates you in public. The beast grows, and the anger feeds on itself. You drive the shame and humiliation into that same cage, and they only make the beast stronger."

Quinn was talking faster now-the words coming in an unscripted torrent that flowed from his own troubled past. "You manage the beast until your husband threatens the one thing you hold dear, the one undefiled thing in your life, the only thing worth living for. The rage and fear consume you and overwhelm your inhibitions until you become the monster your father and husband have created. Your husband becomes your father. Threatening you. Abusing you. Abusing your daughter. To protect yourself and Sierra, you must act. You must do what your own mother could not. For the sake of Sierra, you must make it stop."

He paused, lowering his voice. "And you do."

Instinctively, Quinn did something that violated every rule of advocacy-something that ran counter to every defense strategy he had ever learned. He reached down and grabbed the poster board that contained two large photos of the victim. The first showed a bloody close-up of Richard Hofstetter's face-the entry wound in the forehead, execution-style. According to Annie's confession, she had made him kneel and beg for his life. Only then had she pulled the trigger. The second photo showed Hofstetter lying on the living room floor in a pool of his own blood. He placed the two photographs on the easel, side by side.

"Do you punish a mother for protecting her daughter?" Quinn asked. "Do you punish that abused thirteen-year-old girl for finally, twenty-two years later, pulling the trigger on this new abuser? As you've heard from Dr. Mancini, at that pivotal moment in Annie's life, all of her separate realities merged into an explosive fusion-the little girl and the protective mom, the harsh reality of the past colliding with the present, the real world merging with a dreamworld of make-believe justice. In her mind, her father and husband became one.

"Did my client pull the trigger? Yes. But is she guilty? Not under the law. Not when she acted under a delusion so strong that it annihilated her ability to understand the nature and consequences of her actions."

Quinn surveyed the jury, trying to read the looks on their faces. He suddenly felt drained. "My client was legally insane when she pulled the trigger," he said softly. "The only thing more insane would be to make her pay for it. Her father abused her. Her husband abused her. Don't let the system abuse her too."

He waited there for a moment before he turned and started back to his counsel table. He stopped halfway and turned to face the jurors again. This time, he felt the tears resurface, stinging the backs of his eyes.

"Twenty-two years ago, that ten-year-old boy tried to help his sister but couldn't summon the courage to act. Instead, he listened to his dad's menacing footsteps and, alone in the dark, begged God for justice. But justice never came."

Quinn looked down, wishing he could have done more. "Today, he's begging again."

He turned in the quietness of the courtroom and took his seat. He folded his hands on the table and stared straight ahead.

Annie reached over and placed her hand on top of his. "You did everything you could," she whispered. "Nobody could ask for a better brother than you."

For what seemed like an eternity, Quinn could feel the eyes of the packed gallery-and the ubiquitous television camera-boring into him and Annie. The proceedings, like a modern Shakespearean tragedy, had captivated the nation's fleeting imagination. Before this case, Quinn had been a rising star in the Las Vegas trial lawyer community, but nothing had prepared him for this. The insanity plea and sibling act had turned an already high-profile murder case into a national media obsession.

"Ms. Duncan?" Judge Strackman's calming voice seemed to release the hypnotic trance Quinn had beckoned. "Do you have rebuttal?"

"Yes, Your Honor. Thank you."

Carla Duncan rose to her full height and stepped confidently in front of her counsel table in the small Vegas courtroom. She was the very picture of credibility-a fifty-year-old career prosecutor who didn't try to hide her age. Tall and thin with hair streaked gray, she conveyed the sort of gravitas that age confers on leading actors and actresses. To Quinn's great regret, she had tried a nearly flawless case, an Oscar-worthy performance.

"How dare he?" she asked. "I spent my first twelve years as a prosecutor trying child- and spousal-abuse cases. I cried with those moms and daughters. I hated those monsters who did this to them. I've been called every name in the book by bombastic defense lawyers. I've been threatened by defendants. I've had midnight calls from victims, and I've cried myself to sleep after visiting them in the hospital.. .."

Quinn had heard enough. "Objection, Your Honor. This case is not about Ms. Duncan and her career as a prosecutor."

"You're the one who put the system on trial," Carla Duncan shot back. "And I'm part of the system you're so quick to condemn."

Judge Ronnie Strackman stroked his beard, a mannerism Quinn had grown to detest. A few months from retirement, Strackman had been reluctant to rule throughout the trial-like a referee who swallows his whistle, leaving the competitors to slug it out. When he did rule, he often favored the prosecution, which Quinn found unsurprising given the amount of cash Quinn's firm had thrown at Strackman's opponent in the last judicial election.

But even Judge Strackman could stumble onto the right ruling once in a while. "This case is about the defendant's mental state at the time of the crime," Strackman said, surprising Quinn. "I will not allow it to degenerate into a referendum on our criminal justice system."

Carla Duncan thrust out her chin. "With respect, Your Honor, you already have. Mr. Newberg's defense really has very little to do with temporary insanity and much to do with whether his sister was entitled to take the law into her own hands. The system is already standing trial, Your Honor. The only question is whether you'll permit me to defend it."