A Miscarriage of Justice That Led to a Change of Law
The defense brought in a psychiatrist as an expert witness, who testified that Steven Steinberg killed his wife in the midst of a dissociative reaction. As such, the defendant’s lawyers argued, he could not have been aware of what he was doing at the time. Steven himself was a presentable person who came across as a nice guy. After their deliberations, the jury returned its verdict. They found that the defendant was not guilty on grounds that he had suffered from temporary insanity when he killed his wife.
Because the insanity was only temporary and he was sane at the time of the acquittal, Steven Steinberg walked out of court a free man. In the trial’s aftermath, Arizona changed its insanity defense laws. Judges were thenceforth required to impose a “guilty but insane” sentence in temporary insanity scenarios such as that of the Steinberg case. Criminal defendants who are found guilty but insane these days would have to go to a mental institute. There, they might be interred for as long as if they had been sentenced to prison.