The Cases That Haunt Us

However—and this is a big however—though you may be mentally ill, that does not mean that (a) you do not know the difference between right and wrong and (b) you are unable to conform your behavior (not your thoughts necessarily, but your behavior ) to the rules of society.

So someone can be mentally ill but still criminally responsible—they do what they do because they want to rather than because they have to.

On its most essential level, criminology is about why people do the things they do; that is, it is about the human condition.

You can be fearless or mission-oriented without being particularly criminally sophisticated.

We are going to try to follow Sherlock Holmes’s dictum that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

people don’t act out of character.

chronological age and behavioral age do not always match.

As I’ve stated on many occasions, murder is the single most disturbing and devastating experience that can happen to any of us; because murder, unlike death by disease or accident, is an intentional act, one that turns our world upside down and robs us of all of our basic orientations to the world except, if we are very fortunate, our faith.

We expect an offender like this to overcompensate for his feelings of inferiority by putting down those he actually secretly envies

As discussed earlier, men with successful, fulfilling relationships with women don’t generally gun them down.