Word: verdicts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...other to make the critical judgment about his sanity. Hinckley's lawyers fear that once jurors see videotapes of the shooting and hear exhaustive FBI testimony about Hinckley's elaborate transcontinental drifting in the months that preceded the act, they would be incapable of reaching a verdict dispassionately on the question of his mental state. "Understandably," the attorneys contend in their brief, "there will be great rage and anger directed at Mr. Hinckley." The best guess of lawyers familiar with the case is that Judge Parker will rule in favor of a conventional, single-jury trial...
...dark-walnut-paneled Ottawa courtroom was packed with government lawyers, bureaucrats and a few curious law students last week as the nine black-robed justices of Canada's Supreme Court filed in to deliver a historic verdict on the country's future. When Chief Justice Bora Laskin began to read, there was a moment of confusion. A special sound system failed, and his words were barely audible to a nationwide television audience. But the impact of his message was clear enough. At the end of a five-month courtroom fight between the federal government of Canadian Prime Minister...
...insanity defense is rarely invoked and even more rarely successful. Among would-be assassins of Presidents, two have escaped a guilty verdict on the basis of it. One was Richard Lawrence, the house painter who fired at Andrew Jackson during a funeral service in the Capitol rotunda in 1835. The other was John Schrank, the saloonkeeper who shot Teddy Roosevelt in Milwaukee as the former President was en route to deliver a campaign speech...
Still another experiment is the "guilty but mentally ill" verdict, which was put to use in Illinois last week in the case of Drama Student Paul DeWit, 22, who stabbed his acting coach to death with a pair of scissors. DeWit must be confined at least 20 years, the minimum sentence for murder. Initially, he will go to a mental hospital, and if cured before his sentence has expired, he will be transferred to a prison to serve the remaining years...
...more. I'm a fair weather fan now, and I will happily carry on my back all the evil connotations that go along with that title. I will cheer for them when (if) they win, but only during the 11 p.m. news, after the verdict...