Vocabulary notes

to map	составлять план
attempted assassination	попытка убийства
insanity	безумие, невменяемость
to confine	заточить, держать взаперти
to quip	насмехаться
constituents	избиратели
drastically	радикально, коренным образом
to pose a danger to	представлять опасность для
to do damage	наносить ущерб
travesty	пародия
to commit	помещать в, арестовывать
deem	полагать, считать

Task 3. Read the text again and make sure you know all underlined parts of the text. Give their Russian equivalents

Task 4. Answer the following questions:

1. What is main idea of this text?

2. What made John W. Hinckley notorious?

3. What was the reaction of constituents to Hinckley’s case?

4. Whom does the author blame for Hinckley’s acquittal?

5. What was the practice of treating the NGRI acquittees until recent years?

6. What have mental institutions been turned into with the development of new psychoactive drugs?

7. What may happen if a patient doesn't like his medication?

Task 5. Agree or disagree with the following statements. Agreement or disagreement should be followed by some comment

1. To millions of Americans, the verdict was astounding.

2. John W. Hinckley, Jr. fired a bullet into Ronald Reagan’s shoulder.

3. John W. Hinckley was found guilty by reason of insanity.

4. The insanity defense is being used by people who are very clever.

5. Hinckley will be remembered mostly as the travesty of justice.

6. Angry constituents bombarded the office and those of other lawmakers with hand made bombs and missiles.

7. Most NGRI acquittees spent shorter periods in mental institutions than they would have in prisons if they had pleaded guilty.

Task 6. Ask questions to which the following statements are the answers:

1. Hinckley fired a bullet into Ronald Reagan's chest and horribly wounded his press secretary and shot two others.

2. He would be confined to a federal mental hospital.

3. The insanity defense should be drastically limited.

4. The driving force that final­ly moved legislators to bring an end to the mockery of criminal justice.

5. Sen. Arlen Specter is a former prosecutor.

6. Long-term hospitalizations are rare.

7. The drugs are no sure-fire control for mental disorders.

Task 7. Explain in English what the words and word combinations mean:

To map a crime, mental hospital, psychiatrist, to buy one’s way out of, prosecutor, travesty of justice, the driving force, mockery, to plead guilty, rapid-turnover, sure-fire control, acquittee, to compel

Task 8. Practice the speech patterns given below. Make up two sentences of your own on each pattern

1. Most NGRI acquittees spent longer periods in mental institutions than they would have in prisons if they had pleaded guilty. Nobody would remember Hinckley’s name if he hadn’t attempted to assassinate the American president.

2. Today most states must hold judicial hearings before com­mitting the NGRI acquittee. Most NGRI acquittees spent long periods in mental institu­tions before being released.

3. Some must even obtain a judge’s permission if the patient objects to being transferred from a less secure unit to a more secure one. Angry constituents objected to his being confined to a federal mental hospital

4. 70 percent of all defendants could provide as good an insanity defense as John Hinckley. I believe he is as clever and manipulative as any other NGRI acquittee.

5. Yet we should not blame the jury. We should blame the law. It is obvious that the insanity defense should be drastically limited.

Task 9. Make the summary of the text. Use the key words and word combinations

Text 2

Task 1. Answer the questions:

1. Do you believe that mental patients can be completely cured?

2. How should NGRI acquittees be treated?

3. What is your opinion of NGRI acquittees?

Task 2. Read the text to get the main idea paying special attention to the underlined parts of the text (key words and word combinations

Little wonder that psychi­atrists and state-court judges now generally feel pressured to get the criminally insane NGRI acquittees back onto the streets — or that they are making mistakes that show up on front pages as sensational crimes by ex-mental inmates:

•In New York, George Fitzsimmons, who was adjudged NGRI in the murder of his parents, con­vinced psychiatrists that he was no longer dangerous and was released to go live with an aunt and uncle. He told psychiatrists he loved them "like my own mother and father." He stabbed them to death. Only then did investigators find that, in both instances, he had had himself named beneficiary of his victims’ life insurance.

•In Hawaii's Waikiki Beach hotel area, Robert E. Miller wound­ed a tourist in an unprovoked snip­er attack and was committed to Kaneohe State Hospital. Six years later, in 1979, he was placed on leave and soon returned to the same area, where with a high-powered rifle he picked off seven people in the teem­ing tourist crowds.

The use of the insanity plea has, in some states, increased significantly in recent years as judges and legis­lators have adopted ever vaguer definitions of insanity and "dimin­ished capacity." Since defendants sent to mental institutions are usu­ally released earlier than those sent to prison, some defendants have learned to feign insanity. A study at Washington's St. Elizabeth's Hospital — the very facility where Hinckley is being held concluded that of over 1oo hardcore criminals adjudicated NGRI all were "highly clever, manipulative individuals — not insane at all."

Such a person was Garrett Trapnell, arrested at age 20 for armed robbery. His lawyer told him, "You are going to prison for 20 years, or you can go to the state hospital." One accomplice indeed got a 20-year sentence, but Trapnell went to Maryland's Spring Grove Hospital Center with a diagnosis of «chronic paranoid schizophrenia," only to be released a year later. He subse­quently boasted in a lengthy taped interview with a magazine writer, "I read more books on psychiatry and psychology than probably any psychology student in the world."

On subsequent arrests for armed robbery, Trapnell bamboozled more than a dozen psychiatrists into confirming his first diagnosis and won repeated judicial releases after sanity was quickly restored. Only after he skyjacked an airliner was he convicted on criminal charges and sentenced to life in prison. At the trial, the prosecutor played his taped magazine interview, and jurors heard him gloat about his former schizophrenia di­agnosis: "It is a license to kill. I could go out and shoot ten people; in six months I'd be free."