16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughtful and pleasant read about awful doings, August 22, 2000
I find the biases and filters with which other reviewers came to this book amusing and not very helpful. The fact is, Dr. Lewis's book is neither as great nor as bad as many of them make out.
Yes, she does speak as a feeling person as much as a professional, and yes, she sometimes makes herself seem far more naive than I suspect she must have been. Also, of necessity the book parades a rogues gallery of killers -- male and female -- and their gruesome crimes before us.
On the one hand, this is not a scientific paper, it is a popular book for the lay reader. And nevertheless, Dr. Lewis has several very important points to make. Most and perhaps all of the death row inmates she has studied not only came from horrid socioeconomic and psychological backgrounds, but they appear to have suffered brain damage before birth, at birth, or in accidents or due to abuse since. Some appeared to suffer genuine seizures and mental blackouts; others, much as Dr. Lewis's training and inclination led her to resist the notion, genuinely appeared to have multiple personalities. Her conversion on this point by flesh-and-blood evidence is an instructive process.
These facts raise interesting questions about criminal responsibility and culpability, ones the legal system is not anywhere near prepared to acknowledge and weigh in its decisions. The conclusion is not that society should free these damaged souls, but perhaps that the nature of their punishment and treatment could be better informed. Dr. Lewis voices strong if not terribly coherent criticisms of these failings.
So I found the book engrossing and thought-provoking. Unfortunately, my hardbound copy suffers from the growing plague in contemporary books of computer spell-check-dependent typos. There are references to "grizzly murder" (112) and "grizzliest murders" (258 -- though the adjective is spelled correctly on page 284), and to a fetus's navel "chord" (264). Most unfortunate for a Jewish author, one reads of "a minion of Hassidim (142 -- the word is "minyan," editors!), and even worse for a doctor, we find the sentence: "A death row psychiatrist's allegiance is torn between Hypocrites and the state" (187). Hypocritic Oath, anyone?
Despite these minor irritations, this is a useful and readable book.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hardly a Liberal, January 4, 2005
This review is from: Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Inside the Minds of Killers (Mass Market Paperback)
Though I'm a proponent of the death penalty, reading this book in the last 24 hours, I have reasons to question it, especially in the context of abused criminals who reenact their abuse onto others. Lewis has made me question my cut and dry attitude and has shown me the gapping hole in my bag of logic, truth, and criminology. Guilty By Reason of Insanity leaves me with more questions than answers. Though this isn't a genre that I read, Lewis's writing has me hungering for more answers.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An account of the causes of and punishment for violent crime, August 19, 1999
This review is from: Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Inside the Minds of Killers (Mass Market Paperback)
Psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis Provides a fairly imformative account of the lives of violent criminals, the causes of their behavior, and their punishment. This book is based on her experiences interviewing murderers on death row. For a far more informative, more profound, and persuasive account of violence, its causes and punishment, I suggest reading James Gilligan's book VIOLENCE: REFLECTIONS ON A NATIONAL EPIDEMIC.
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