Unit 3 Discussion Points

Task 1. Discuss the following points with your fellow students:

1. Insanity is easily feigned

2. Only clever and manipulative criminals abuse insanity defense

3. The truly insane criminal is extraordinarily rare

4. Insanity defense is a way to evade respon­sibility for one’s crime

Task 2. Give a short newspaper review on psychiatric blunders in diagnozing insanity. Remember that your interview should appeal to the interests of the interested readers. It can be neutral, emotional, and descriptive. Prove your point of view.

Task 3. Work in pairs. Discuss any of insanity defense problems of today. You may speak about abuse, psychiatric mistakes, travesties of justice, manipulative criminals, incompetent judges, corrupted lawyers and the like. One of the students is supposed to introduce a subject of mutual interest, and the other student disagrees or agrees with his partner’s point of view.

Task 4. Speak on the topic: “Schizophrenia di­agnosis is a license to kill because ….”

Task 5. Team work. Case Study: The following situations are based on real cases from the federal courts. Consider the arguments, and then decide how you would rule. Compare your answers with actual case results.

Mrs. Jones was an outspoken high-school English teacher. During a private meeting with the principal over school poli­cies, she lost her temper and called him several names in a loud voice.

The next day the principal fired her. She filed a lawsuit in federal court, claiming the school violated her right of free speech. "A public employee cannot be fired for ex­pressing her views," Mrs. Jones's lawyer told the judge.

The school-board attorney said the suit should be dismissed. "The right of free speech applies only in public places, not in private meetings," he said. "Besides, she deserved to be fired for being disre­spectful to her boss."

Should Mrs. Jones get her job back?

Chapter 8: Why Do Judges Keep Letting Him Off?” unit 1. Giving the summary of the text Text 1

Task 1. Answer the questions:

1. What is your attitude to the problem of driving while under the influence of alcohol?

2. Is driving while under the influence of alcohol a serious problem in this country?

3. What punishment should be applied to persons who drive under the influence of alcohol?

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)

On the day David Gunderman was born — January 18, 1978 — William Richard Rowan, age 49, was finishing out probation on a hit-and-run conviction (his second) and awaiting sentencing on a charge of driving while under the influence of alcohol (his third). He was allowed to plead guilty to reckless driving.

A few months after David's first birthday, Rowan was arrested in Anaheim, Calif., and again pleaded guilty to driving while under the influence of alcohol.

Just after David's second birthday, Rowan was arrested in Santa Ana, Calif., twice in five weeks for driving while under the influence of alcohol and pleaded guilty in both cases. For the fourth time he was sent to an alcohol-counseling program. Two months later he was again arrested in Santa Ana when he was involved in a hit-and-run accident and refused to take an alcohol test. The charges were dismissed when the witness couldn't be located.

Less than a month after David's third birthday, Rowan began a 45-day jail sentence because his refusal to take a chemical test had violated his probation. His driver's license, suspended several times before, was revoked through 1983.

But 61 days alter David's fourth birthday, on a Saturday afternoon last March, Rowan drove away from a downtown bar in Santa Ana, where, according to police, he had been drinking. By then he had eight convictions for reckless driv­ing, hit-and-run and driving while under the influence of alcohol, plus three probation violations.

Along the route was David Gunderman and his friend Peter Kroll, also four. They were in their Santa Ana neighborhood, waiting, as they did every Saturday afternoon, for the ice-cream man. At their first sight of the truck, they would run home, their voices filled with laughter, for their ice-cream mon­ey. Peter was on his way to join David at the corner on 4th Street when the accident occurred.