Insanity defense: Six notorious cases when it worked
Lorena Bobbitt
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On that evening, when John returned to the Manassas, Virginia apartment the couple shared, he was reportedly drunk, but apparently not so sloshed that he couldn't manage to rape his wife -- although he was subsequently acquitted of this crime.
Afterward, Lorena rose from their bed and headed to the kitchen, ostensibly to get a drink of water. While there, however, she grabbed a knife and brought it back to their bedroom -- where she took hold of her sleeping husband's penis and cut off almost half of it.
Bobbitt then split, taking the bloody penis portion with her. She drove for a while, then tossed it into a field; it was later found, packed in ice and rushed to a hospital, where it was reattached to John during an operation said to have taken more than nine hours. And the member in question apparently still worked afterward, since John had a brief career as a porn actor in future years. His magnum opus? Frankenpenis.
At trial, Lorena's attorneys detailed a long history of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband, including an assertion that he'd forced her to have an abortion. And while prosecutors insisted that she had known what she was doing when she took a blade to John's manhood, the jury ultimately accepted the argument that she snapped due to the alleged rape and previous mistreatment and ruled her not guilty by reason of insanity. She spent 45 days being evaluated at a state hospital, after which she was released.
Continue to read more notorious examples of when the insanity defense worked.
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