Nobody's Child: A Tragedy, a Trial, and a History of the Insanity Defense

by Susan Nordin Vinocour

A powerful and humane exploration of the “insanity defense,” through one heartbreaking case.

A three-year-old boy dies, having apparently fallen while trying to reach a bag of sugar on a high shelf. His grandmother stands accused of second-degree murder. Psychologist Susan Nordin Vinocour agrees to evaluate the defendant, to determine whether the impoverished and mentally ill woman is competent to stand trial.

Vinocour soon finds herself pulled headlong into a series of difficult questions, beginning with: Was the defendant legally insane on the night in question? As she wades deeper into the story, Vinocour traces the legal definition of insanity back nearly two hundred years, when our understanding of the human mind was in its infancy. “Competency” and “insanity,” she explains, are creatures of legal definition, not psychiatric reality, and in criminal law, “insanity” has become a luxury of the rich and white. With passion, clarity, and heart, Vinocour examines the troubling intersection of mental health issues and the law.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, Psychology, Crime, History, Mental Health, Adult

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 24, 2020

About the author

Susan Nordin Vinocour, an attorney, is a retired clinical and forensic psychologist, a former prosecutor, and a former associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. She lives in Pittsford, New York.

Reviews

[Vonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Vinocour did an outstanding job with this case and breaking it down so the common layman understood it. A forensic psychologist she took a case dealing with a 3 year olds death. The child was forced on his grandmother by child services. She told them in no uncertain terms she was unable to take care of the child mentally or physically. Her daughter, the child's mother had a mental breakdown and the grandmother had no choice. The grandmother is mentally slow, a teacher saying she had the mental capacity of a potted plant, and the child never sleeps, is always in trouble. When the child falls and dies is the mentally incapacitated grandmother responsible? A deep, heartbreaking investigation into does this indigent, mentally ill woman deserve the insanity defense or jail?

[Vonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Vinocour did an outstanding job with this case and breaking it down so the common layman understood it. A forensic psychologist she took a case dealing with a 3 year olds death. The child was forced on his grandmother by child services. She told them in no uncertain terms she was unable to take care of the child mentally or physically. Her daughter, the child's mother had a mental breakdown and the grandmother had no choice. The grandmother is mentally slow, a teacher saying she had the mental capacity of a potted plant, and the child never sleeps, is always in trouble. When the child falls and dies is the mentally incapacitated grandmother responsible? A deep, heartbreaking investigation into does this indigent, mentally ill woman deserve the insanity defense or jail?

[Kinsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wide in scope but heartbreaking in intimacy, Nobody's Child details a case the Vinocour - a forensic psychologist - worked on involving the death of a three year old boy. With his grandmother behind bars for his death, Vinocour details the fascinating history of the insanity plea in both ancient and modern courts, and the ways that compos mentis has changed throughout history. With heartbreaking interviews with the grandmother and a detailed reenactment of the trial, Vincour has written something that is difficult but necessary to read: a castigation of the law and the way it treats the mentally ill, mentally handicapped, and the poor.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

TW: child abuse, child death, sexual abuse of an at-risk adult

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am glad I read this but not for the reasons you think. Author is a JD and PsyD who does forensic evals for courts. The writing is so so, personal child abuse background should not have been included, more interesting talking about the legal stuff than the psychology stuff. But the shocking part is so inadvertent - that there is so much woo in the forensic psychology world. The scenes where she puts a clearly developmentally delayed woman through a *Rorschach* test even though the woman can't even understand what is wanted from her, and is ashamed of her own intellectual limitations ("I never did well at school...") and thinks that somehow this is going to have any bearing whatsoever on anything is a little sickening. It's like watching someone do phrenology and determine people's fate that way. Sprinkle in for some fun some demonization of BPD and you get a pretty good idea about another horrific aspect of the justice system - psychological profiling/forensic psychology. It was sickening to read, though not for the reasons intended by the author.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Nobody’s Child: A Tragedy, a Trial, and a History of the Insanity Defense", by forensic psychologist Susan Nordin Vinocour, effectively covers exactly what the title implies it covers—and you, as the reader, mostly get what you were promised. Mostly. Vinocour sets out in her book to examine what exactly constitutes an insanity defense, both in legal terms and practical application, through the lens of a child abuse/murder case in which she was a key defense witness. The actual execution of the book, however, in terms of its persuasive power and writing level, is less successful than its lofty (and honestly, noble-minded) goals. I started the book riveted to the case study that makes up the bulk of the frame narrative, but gradually lost interest in the book entirely as the story was bogged down by a series of contextual history lessons that neither particularly illuminated the case at hand nor contributed greatly to my understanding of a complicated psycholegal concept.

The book opens with the story of Dorothy Dunn, an intellectually disabled black woman in her forties’ who is accused of horrific child abuse and neglect leading to the death of her grandson, Raymie. Raymie is found on the kitchen floor of his grandmother’s dilapidated home in a state of rigor mortis—he had been dead for three days when Dunn called an ambulance from a pay phone to come “fix” her predeceased grandson. When authorities arrived, the oddly distant woman had trouble answering basic questions and asked if she was “going to jail”. Indeed she was—to await trial for the second-degree murder of her young charge. Did the boy suffer a head injury following a fall (a theory supported by the crime scene), meaning the grandmother’s prolonged delay in seeking medical attention caused his death? Was he beaten by the grandmother, whose disregard for the child’s wellbeing went as far explicitly denying the child medical care, which resulted in his death? What exactly happened in that kitchen three days earlier, and what was Dorothy Dunn’s state of mind when it happened?

Enter Vinocour, contacted by Dunn’s public defender lawyer to psychologically assess Dunn’s mental state both presently and at the time of the alleged crime. Vinocour’s job was not so much to determine whether or not Dorothy Dunn had committed a crime, but to decide whether Dunn’s mental instability at the time of Raymie’s death would support an insanity plea. Though the term is bandied about often in fictional legal dramas, I’d never really considered what the actual legal definition of the term was, or how it would affect a criminal defense. The author, a former lawyer herself, attempts to interweave chapters on the history of this term and its evolution, from the middle ages to the present, with chapters of somewhat straightforward reportage of the Dunn case and its progression through the legal system. It’s in this call-and-response, history-versus-case-study approach that an otherwise engaging and affecting book loses its way.

Vinocour provides historical background in these alternating chapters in much the dry, pedantic way a poorly written literature review at the beginning of a research paper would. The information is synthesized from a variety of historical sources and cases and presented as evidence for the everchanging nature of the legal definition of insanity—from whether or not the defendant had a guilty mind to whether or not the accused party could tell right from wrong to whether the criminal could tell what they were doing while committing the crime, etcetera. All these arguments are incredible interesting—it’s just that the author seems unable to present them in a way that is interesting. The facts of each case are laid out on the table, briefly discussed, and then the tide of the text moves along, without really engaging the reader in a meaningful philosophical inquiry into the implications of the each of these different criterion for a person to be deemed legally “insane”. The cases she uses, while classic, are also ubiquitous—not being a legal scholar by any means, I was already familiar with several of her historical case studies, and as there was no insight into the cases, merely a presentation of the facts, I didn’t learn anything particularly from these portions of the book, and just had to kind of wade through to get back to the true-crime portions of the book. In more deft hands, the cases would have provided thought-provoking material for considering the change, over time, of what was considered “insane” versus simply “morally bankrupt” or “evil”, and whether or not those definitions served the process of “justice” in its many possible definitions. As is, these chapters grind the momentum of the book to a halt at times, and felt both stale and drawn-out.

Far more successful are the author’s chapters describing her participation in the pre-trial and trial aspects of the Dunn case. Vincour vividly retells the story of a woman and her family who were let down by social service safety nets again and again, forming a compelling counter-narrative to the prosecution’s accusations of Dunn’s intentionally callous disregard for her children’s safety and wellbeing. From CPS’s lack of intervention in Dorothy Dunn’s own bleak childhood (in which she was born mentally challenged, and was physically and emotionally scarred by parental abuse and neglect), to its continued disinterest in pursuing what seem in hindsight to be glaring, actionable problems within the Dunn family (children with high lead levels from lead poisoning, malnutrition, Raymie’s mother’s mental instability and drug use, Dorothy’s attempt to put one child in foster care only to have him returned, Raymie’s essentially being “left” at Dunn’s doorstep by CPS when there were no alternative arrangements available for his care), there’s a continual feeling that this family was allowed to fall through the cracks, and only the fact of a homicide case brought attention to a group of people who could have used the help and public interest well before the tragedy occurred. Vincour succeeds in painting a grim picture of a woman living on the margins of society and left with very limited intellectual and physical resources, to fend for herself “as best she could”. When her best was shown to be inadequate, even by her own standards, still Dunn was expected to just carry on somehow, caseworkers willingly turning a blind eye to the limitations of her childcare abilities because her children and grandchild didn’t fit the very narrow criteria to be removed from the home. An admittedly overworked, underfunded system that was ostensibly designed to protect children, support caregivers, and keep families together in the end did none of those things for Dorothy Dunn and her family.

Vincour takes special care to highlight the possibility of the media’s influence on the trial’s outcome, in spite of the promise of an impartial jury trial. The judge in this case declined the defense’s request to place a gag order on the media, leading to media coverage emphasizing the more salacious aspects of the crime that was fully accessible to the jury via the nightly news or their daily newspaper. It was easy for me, just an uninvolved party well after the fact, to read these headlines and the descriptions of the crime scene in the beginning of the book and have a knee-jerk reaction to Dorothy Dunn’s culpability in her grandchild’s senseless death. How much harder would it be for a jury in the courtroom, looking at autopsy photos of the child’s broken body, to NOT form an emotional rather an analytical reaction to the incredibly emotionally upsetting idea of a child dying in such circumstances? This was one of the more interesting takeaways I had from the book—that a public whose interest skews towards the ghoulish (read: yours truly) can often assume a false sense of being “certain” as to what must have happened based on media reporting that is well-aware of that taste for the Grand Guignol aspects of the case and caters to it specifically, in the interest of ratings/selling newspapers. If all you hear are the more nightmarish aspects of a crime, how can those evocative details fail to color your impartial view of a crime and the person accused of committing it? Now, sometimes a murderer is just an out and out murderer, legally caught dead to rights-- but in these more ethically murky waters, it’s interesting to consider how our own biases and the media’s support of those initial natural feelings of repulsion to horrible events that make us more likely to judge people whose shoes we’ll never have to walk in.

All in all, and in spite of its flaws, a stimulating look at an aspect of the legal system that, considering the everchanging nature of mental health issues and their public perception in America, deserves frequent revisiting.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was heartbreaking and enraging. The author has worked both as a lawyer and as a forensic psychologist, and her dual background makes this book possible. It's the story of both a single trial--of a black woman accused of abusing and killing her grandson--and of the insanity defense, which is widely misunderstood.

The defendant's story is one of incredible systemic failure on the part of multiple agencies. Raymie died not just because of either his grandmother's actions or an accident, but because authorities had repeatedly failed to notice or provide support for a family that was failing--generations of abuse, poverty, mental illness, and intellectual disability. He was sent to live with a grandmother who warned CPS that she was not able to take care of him because of the needs of her other children. We often hear, these days, about CPS overinvolvement in the lives of families of color. But CPS also has repeatedly failed to intervene in cases where lives were at risk, and this was one such case.

The legal system, especially since Reagan's crusade against the insanity defense following his shooting by Hinckley, has been tilted against defendants with mental illness. The public misunderstands the insanity defense, thinking it's used far more often than it is, that it lets defendants off the hook, and that a defendant may, after being declared not guilty by reason of insanity, walk out of a hospital shortly after. (I know someone who has worked in forensic psychiatric hospitals; they are not pleasant places.) Dr. Vinocour does an interesting job of explaining the history of the defense and the legal differences between knowing an action is wrong, and understanding it. The system is also tilted against poor defendants, especially those of color. The combination is the perfect storm of injustice.

The language could, in a few places, have been toned down slightly--there are a few clichés. But it's an absorbing and well written story.

[Amelia L · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded down. this book was a deeply horrifying look at not only the american justice system, but the myriad of social systems and intended safety nets that can fail so easily. this was a hard read at times because of the unflinching details of dorothy and her family’s story, which was also the most impactful part of the book for me. the details of how the insanity defense and the legal concept of insanity has developed over time were super interesting, but they felt less coherent, and i honestly would have liked big chunks of discussion about it better rather than it being sandwiched kind of randomly between pieces of the more narrative sections, which made it sometimes difficult to keep track of the actual timeline of how legal insanity developed, which is an important part of the book’s concept.
vinocour herself is definitely not blameless or anything in the system’s failure of dorothy. honestly, one of the things this book left me with a stronger distrust of was expert witnesses and forensic psychology.
overall extremely interesting and necessary, just had some structural things i would have liked better changed.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Retired clinical and forensic psychologist explores the case of a woman on trial for the unwitting murder of her grandson. What ensues is a fascinating page turner that explores the painful history and contradictions of the insanity defense. The US Justice System is deeply flawed:this book offers a look at a unique case that shows just how flawed it is. This is not an easy read, but credit the author for keeping me interested in a topic I have literally never given much thought to.

[Csimplot Simplot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book!!!

[Jan Peregrine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lifespan and Nobody's Child~~

Recently I read two fascinating, nonfiction books that gave me two ways of viewing the future of our humanity. The first, Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To by Australian American scientist David A. Sinclair was the optimistic, highly engaging perspective where advances in aging research offer a new, healthier, and more ethical future. The other, Nobody's Child: A Tragedy, A Trial, and A History of the Insanity Defense by Susan Vinocour shows us how terribly outdated and biased are our ideas still towards the poor, non—white, and mentally challenged after many centuries .

The Sinclair book was a joy to read. The Vinocour book? Not so much. I must, though, highly recommend both. I didn't know that I'd review them together, that this would make sense, but it does. Have you noticed that old people are treated as badly as the mentally ill or disabled?

It's as bad as most people treat farmed animals. Once the poor animals are old enough to provide meat, dairy milk, or eggs, they're exploited for our benefit, not theirs, and 'sacrificed' when no longer useful..

What then is our future going to look like and how can we help it to be a positive future for all of us?

Sinclair's view along with dozens of other cutting-edge researchers, is that aging has been proven all over the scientific world to be a treatable disease and the mother of all epigenetic-based diseases, which is most. Longevity genes allowed the first stirrings of life to survive the harshest of environments and we as humans also carry them. Animals must, also.

There's more good news.

These genes can be stimulated with certain chemicals, exercise, intermittent fasting, more plant-based protein (less amino acids in diet), cellular reprogramming, senolytics (drugs that eliminate senescent, rogue cell clutter), eating stressed, organic produce, and stressing your internal thermostat.. More discoveries will be made, such as, it seems to me, supplemental melatonin. .

So while Vinocour tells us about the tragedy of a middle-aged, black woman in America and how she ended up being thrown into prison for decades, Sinclair challenges the status quo. He tells us we can significantly improve our mental and physical health so we can enjoy decades more of vitality. The young field of science has discovered much already, but much more is to come.

I'm struck by the ethical questions. Why does the mentally ill terrify us and make us wish to punish them? Why has the insanity defense lost its psychological relevance over the years, increasing diminishing its meaning to a simple legal understanding of right and wrong?

Why too have we always regarded aging and eating farmed animals as natural and the way things must be?

Are we afraid of changing the status quo that says we, like farmed animals, must suffer as we age and die violently and miserably?

Sinclair mentions that President George W. Bush's “philosopher,” bioethicist Leon Kass and his committee decided that aging research was not a fight against disease, but against our humanity. This is hogwash, deadly hogwash, as Sinclair observes. The US needs to re-examine its priorities and soon as the advanced countries vie to lead the way to a very promising future Australia is leading now and experiencing much less disease as it embraces longevity research.

The World Health Organization included Old Age as a disease entry in its International Classification of Diseases and on January 1, 2022 will ask countries to start reporting to them statistics on who dies from Old Age.

It looks very promising that aging humans facing disease, misery, and death will soon be accepted as potential assets to our world, and surely the mentally ill as well should benefit from longevity research.
Will this encourage us to change our unethical treatment of farmed animals who suffer their entire, violently-shortened lives or will we ignore our consciences?.

Fear of mental illness and aging research, (and perhaps not eating 'essential' animal protein) seem to spring from the same source: a moralizing worry over our humanity,\which is deadly hogwash.. Our future must not be more of the status quo that diminishes our humanity in reality. We must open our minds and hearts to what is true humanity, what is most humane.

We must believe we can embrace a better future or we'll be lost.

Invest in aging research. Eat less, particularly animal-based products, and intermittently fast. Get moving with high-intensity workouts.

As a person with an incomplete spinal cord injury at the cervical level for almost half of my life, I've seen my walking progress bloom and then wither with age. I'll do what I can with Sinclair's great advice, although I'm not going to stress my internal thermostat, thank you!

I'm so excited about the possibilities, and ethical choices, our future already offers..

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just could not stop reading this book.

Vinocour takes the reader through an in-depth journey through the case of "Dorothy Dunn" (Vinocour changes the defendant's name, however a quick Google Search provided her real name is Barbara Briggs). The crime described is regarding a child abuse case Vincour becomes involved with as the psychologist for the defense. Vinocour admits she has no sympathy for child abusers and gives the reader substance to her views. However, as Vinocour dives into her psychological analysis of the defendant, her perspective begins to transform. Vincour is able to make the reader understand how mental disability and illness can impact a person into doing things that do not make sense to the average sane person. The author also provides the reader with a rich history, in detail, and understanding of how the Insanity Defense works in the United States.

Vincour is able to do what I feel only a few authors can do flawlessly - she is able to tell the story of her client, while providing supporting material regarding the psychology and the Insanity Defense without it becoming distracting or disjointed. She also supports her points using other cases as examples.

After reading just a bit of the book, I couldn't help but think that we, as a society, have failed the defendant. We allowed the death of this child to occur by not fixing our broken system.

Absolute necessary read if you are interested in the justice system and the flaws we need to fix.

[Chelsea Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up. One word to describe this book: ENGROSSING. While the author shares lots of history about legal insanity and mental health in the justice system, the primary focus was on Dorothy Dunn and her trial. And to be completely honest, I would have just as happily read this book if it only was about Mrs. Dunn. Her case was proven to be representative of everything unjust about the legal system and how it deals out justice to those suffering from mental illness. The only reason I took off half a star was because I felt that Dr. Vinocour included one or two unfounded assumptions in the book (like how an attractive and thin man was sure to be assaulted in prison— as true as that might have been, the stereotype and assumption was unnecessary in my opinion). But that critique is minor as Dr. Vinocour is a convincing writer and storyteller whose words and perspective of the case brought literal tears to my eyes.

A powerful and captivating read. Highly recommend to those fascinated, interested, and perplexed about the intersection of race, mental illness, and poverty in the (so-called) justice system.

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Nordin Vinocour looks at the insanity defense in her book Nobody's Child: Poverty, Justice, and the Insanity Defense in America. She provides a history of the legal definition of insanity through the years, and how it differs across the states, and that is has a very narrow definition. She provides insight into the difficult situation by discussing a case she was brought in on for the defense. It is a difficult case to read about where the situation was horrid no matter what the legal outcome was. An intellectually disabled woman was charged with second degree murder of her grandchild. She called 911, and the child was found to have been dead for days and she is quickly arrested. Vinocour describes the generational history of abuse and mental illness in the family and her interviews with the woman when she is in jail. She also compares what happens with this woman, who has a lack of support and resources and lives in poverty when compared to similar-ish examples of wealthy white individuals and the outcomes of their cases. It's an informative book, but incredibly depressing.

[theStorykeeper · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ ~50pg

I can't even with this woman's hypocrisy. She starts her discovery of Dorothy by saying she has no sympathy for child abusers, then spends a whole chapter criticizing other people for assuming Dorothy is a child abuser - exactly what she just did. She makes blanket statements about certain elements of human development being genetic and others being learned when this has not been scientifically proven and in fact cannot be proven scientifically. She seems to think if you bring a knife to school for self-defense then stab someone to death with it you aren't guilty of killing that person as if there is something else one can do with a knife besides hurt someone. She responds to the ME's report that the child died of child abuse and malnutrition by saying "so he's assuming Dorothy purposely abused and starved the child." No. No, he did not say that. He said SOMEONE abused the child; he did not say who. He was doing his job and reporting the facts objectively.

[Doris Vandruff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true story of the death of a three year old child. And how the legal system failed in the trial of his grandmother.
The grandmother is accused of the child's death and abuse.
The Author tells the story in a factual up front manner. She is diligent in sighting facts from documents and court hearings and from the grandmother herself. Her attention to detail is phenomenal.
This book is her truth.
The system is definitely flawed when it comes to the insanity plea. It seems to work for white influential people but not for people at poverty levels that are not in control of their faculties and are in minority classes.
This was an interesting, educational and eye-opening book.
Recommended!

[Daniel Farabaugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Towards the beginnings of this book, I was a bit disappointed because the author seemed to be addressing her personal narrative too much but as it went along this became a strength of the book. The author was able to use the case at the center in order to show the larger picture of the history of the defense and current legal doctrine.

The other great strength of this book is how it illustrates how the poor with mental health problems are ignored by the system until something tragic happens and then the system punishes them in order to find someone to blame for our failures. The woman at the center of this book is charged with depraved indifference which would be better applied to society's treatment of her.

[Carla Lo Coco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a sobering book on the intersections of poverty, racial inequality, child neglect, and mental illness leading to truly terrible outcomes for so many poor people, especially people of color. There were so many grim moments. This book is depressing AF.

My great-grandfather was tried for murder and acquitted by reason of temporary insanity, so I read it partially because I had a small hope that his case would be mentioned. It wasn’t, but there were plenty of other historical examples, which were interesting. But I cannot say this enough: This book is really depressing and has a lot of discussion of child abuse and neglect. It’s heartbreaking.

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really fascinating. And sad. Not just the abuse but the situation of the accused really shows the cracks people fall through until something awful happens. I know some people reviewing didn't like the author's history being added but I think it was important in order to understand her bias of the whole affair. Would recommend, the history of the insanity plea and who and how it affects today is quite eye-opening.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heartbreaking and thorough look not at insanity but at culpability. This is not a sensationalist story but one of how those most vulnerable in our society are criminalized and how that criminality is seen far more than their humanity. I sometimes found the historical pieces difficult to recall but that may be because I was listening to the audiobook; they were well-explained, but didn't stick by name. Either way this was a really interesting book.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an informative, riveting, and heartbreaking book. The author does a fine job weaving the narrative with the history and legality of the insanity plea. She pulled me into the narrative such that I had to put the book down and just think about Dorothy and her situation. With regards to the legal and history parts, she wrote clearly without getting into jargon.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a sad, sad, example of justice. We meet the lack of mental health support, the horrible CPS and their horrible reputation and the race card.
This non- fiction book is written the forensic psychologist herself. She did a thorough explanation of what it takes to prove someone’s innocence or mentally ill diagnosis.

[Emanuel B · Rating 5 out of 5]

A chilling indictment of our failure to integrate psychological reality into an antiquated legal system, and the actors who share culpability for the reductionist narratives that condemn the incapacitated.

[Noemi Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was just awful. Absolutely awful. It was such a bummer. Author does an excellent job of showing how archaic our legal system is with regards to mental health, all framed around a story about a family who was failed by the system at every single turn.

[Dena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I strongly recommend this well-written exposé of the justice system as it applies to a specific case in criminal court. I believe our justice system is terribly flawed full of many cases where judges and jury’s miss the justice mark by a long shot.

[Alli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book by chance and I'm glad (?) I did. Well-articulated and heart-wrenching. A story of a sickening tragedy and the even more tragic misunderstanding (and legal entrenchment of the misunderstanding) of mental illness.

[Evelyn Geilmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heard about this book in a Nancy Grace podcast (big fan). Very well written and easy to understand. The history behind our current law was very interesting. The author puts a very human touch to this book as well.

[Susan Krich · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an insightful explanation of a true case in the Rochester NY justice system and the history of the insanity plea.
The names have been changed so I was unable to find out if there was further news of "Dorothy Dunn" after the book ended

[Jessica Rosez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me realize why I stepped back from a social work career. The unspeakable things people do to children. This book was an eye-opener to the system that's in place to "help" children. S

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly sad. Very depressing. Everyone should read this.

[Joanne Puckett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the writing is a little cliche and repetitive but the story is fascinating and disturbing. So many people, especially minorities, forgotten by the system until tragedy inevitably strikes.