Word: gaylin
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NONFICTION: Dorothy Day, William D. Miller ∙ The Killing of Bonnie Garland, Willard Gaylin ∙Poets in Their Youth, Eileen Simpson ∙ Richard and Cosima Wagner: Biography of a Marriage, Geoffrey Skelton ∙Thomas Hardy, Michael Millgate ∙Uncivil Liberties, Calvin Trillin
Justice, Willard Gaylin ∙Late...
...John Train, another brilliant performer on the criminal circuit, who argued that Herrin was suffering from both severe mental disease that impaired his ability to realize what le was doing. (Herrin testified repeatedly that he "wasn't feeling anything" when lie set out to kill his lover.) Thus, Gaylin points out, Litman was actually arguing two incompatible cases: "Not guilty by reason of insanity; or if guilty, only of manslaughter...
Both books show the results of exhaustive research, including lengthy interviews with Herrin. Meyer, a freelance journalist, re-creates the case with admirable detachment. Gaylin, a distinguished psychiatrist and author (Feelings; Partial Justice) - and an admitted "father of daughters" - has specialized in questions of crime and punishment for more than 20 years. He delivers some pungent comments on the psychiatric "storytellers" on both sides, who "were acting as dutiful agents of the men who were paying their fees...
...Catholic Church did for him, Herrin is now an atheist who has "retired from religion." Interviewed by Meyer after he had spent three years in a medium-security prison, he insists: "I think I've served enough time to compensate." Others would side with the prosecution, among them Gaylin. Arguing against canny insanity pleas, and for moral responsibility, he concludes: "The killing of Bonnie Garland, first by Richard Herrin and then again by a legal and cultural process . . . endangers us all. In our compassion for the criminal, we must remain vigilant in defense of the social for the sake...