Abstract
On October 27, 1969, Prosenjit Poddar, a 25-year old graduate student from India, fatally shot and stabbed Tatiana Tarasoff, a young junior college student. One might suppose that this was a crime of passion with a familiar pattern: a spurned suitor’s desire for revenge erupts into an uncontrollable (or perhaps only uncontrolled) impulse to destroy the rejecting woman. Not unexpectedly, the jury convicted Poddar of second-degree murder, despite a plea of insanity and diminished capacity that was considerably buttressed by psychiatric and lay testimony as to Poddar’s bizarre behavior. Poddar’s criminal trial might have ended with his conviction and sentencing, followed by his serving about five years (the average time served for second-degree murder1) and, if his prison behavior was acceptable, his release on parole.
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© 1981 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Winslade, W.J. (1981). Psychotherapeutic Discretion and Judicial Decision: A Case of Enigmatic Justice. In: Spicker, S.F., Healey, J.M., Engelhardt, H.T. (eds) The Law-Medicine Relation: A Philosophical Exploration. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8407-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8407-3_9
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