Word: caplan
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...Lincoln Caplan, a lawyer by training and frequent contributor to the New Yorker, manages in his book, The Insanity Defense and the Trial of John W. Hinckley Jr., to do what his friends in the press had little time to do. He has sifted the evidence, researched the precedents, and projected the Hinckley case outside itself and into a more general and philosophical consideration of the issues. All the while, he subtly weaves his argument and day by day New Yorker-style descriptions ("Jo Ann Moore Hinckley ... wore a salmon-pink outfit, with Peter Pan collar and bow, and spoke...
Hinckley's are not the only delusions put on trial in Caplan's book; with him go much of the present Administration's legal thinking and some of that widespread and misinformed public opinion. Caplan's treatment of the insanity defense aims at discouraging us from seeing the defense as one or all of the following: an overused and therefore dangerous "legal loophole" (the words are, ironically, Richard M. Nixon's): a play-trial toy of the rich (the usual tabloid lore), or, thirdly, a legal contradiction (the view of behaviorists, who see free will as an illusion and absolve...
...CAPLAN'S own case is simply and convincingly put. In 1978, the last year for which data on the insanity defense were available, 40 million Americans were affected by some type of crime. Three fifths of the 10 million suspects were charged. And of these, only 1500 successfully pleaded insanity. And while psychiatry offers no insurance against violence, statistics on recidivism indicate that the probability of repeated crime by a treated mentally ill offender is somewhat lower than for a felon released from prison...
...when the established avant-garde-or the avant-garde establishment-has lost its way. Many eyebrows were raised, therefore, when Wines was appointed to take over this fall as chairman of the environmental and interior design department at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. Critic Ralph Caplan may be understating the case when he says, "Wines' appointment will bring some excitement to Parsons...
Even some supporters of LSC concede that such zeal on behalf of clients has sometimes turned into excessive zeal on behalf of causes. But even some critics argue that the improprieties do not justify the Reagan efforts. Says Gerald Caplan, a law professor at George Washington University who served as LSC's president for six months last year: "A lot of attorneys there deserve credit for working under the most adverse circumstances, which is noble. But they were also some of the most contentious, self-righteous people I've ever met. They need containing, but not dismemberment...