Martin Blinder, M.D. is a forensicpsychiatrist and the author of Psychiatry in the Everyday Practice of Law. Doctor Blinder is noted for his 1979Twinkie defense. Forensics or forensic science is the application of science to questions which are of interest to the legal system. ... Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that studies and treats mental and emotional disorders (see mental illness). ... 1979 is a common year starting on Monday. ... In jurisprudence, a Twinkie defense is a criminal defendants claim that some unusual factor entered into the causes or motives of the alleged crime. ...
Blinder: I performed the examination in June of '96, in juvenile hall.
Blinder: My first impression was a perfectly ordinary, smiling, outgoing young man. There was nothing about his demeanor or his appearance to suggest that we were dealing with either a dangerous fellow, or one who was wrestling with mental retardation or some obviously disabling psychiatric disorder.
Blinder: The diagnosis is made, generally, and certainly I made it in this case, because I was faced with a subject who, first of all, had committed a gratuitous act of violence.
Blinder: I don't know how much merit there would be in the judge's decision that he was not competent, ergo, he doesn't stand trial for his offenses versus the merit in making him go through a court proceeding.
Blinder: Now his exactitude was he knew he had a stick that could inflict pain, because he had been hit by a stick in his life, and he could see the blood and so on.
Blinder: Your question presumes that there is a societal sea change in 25 years so that, had that pair committed their crime today, they would have gone through very much the same process that the 6-year-old did, and I'm not sure that's true.
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