Star Struck (7 Jan. 1992)

This episode of Law And Order deals with a defendant pleading insanity in the brutal assault of soap opera star Blanche Baker. Bradley White is our guilty party he is as obsessed with Baker as that demented fool in California who shot and killed Rebecca Schaefer on which this episode is partly based.

Michael Moriarty puts it plainly enough at the end. The ordinary lay people who make up jury pools are most assuredly not psychiatrists. That defendant White is absolutely nuts everyone agrees. But the standard is insane enough that he cannot appreciate the consequences of his actions. It is also clear that White, his father Werner Klemperer, and his attorney Stephen Joyce are looking for a John Hinckley type of verdict where he's taken to a hospital and then maybe let out and presumably he'd stalk Baker again. Or another example would be assassin Dan White who killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in San Francisco. Although no one alleges it was an overdose of Twinkies that set White off.

Joyce has tried and has made a specialty of insanity defenses. Moriarty is up against the best in that field.

See how this one comes out and what 12 ordinary citizens do.