BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

BRAUNSTEIN'S TRIFECTA: ANGRY, VINDICTIVE or MENTALLY ILL The Virginia Tech massacre is not that far behind us - we still worry about the stigma of those with mental health issues and how to deal with its sufferers in an equitable fashion. My latest trial fixation was on the Peter Braunstein case. Braunstein's defense made the age old 'but he was mentally ill and no responsible' plea. They even went so far as to try to paint his ex-girlfriend as a sexual temptress who drove him to it. (how many times do ex boyfriends try this one on a much smaller scale everyday?) Baruch Hashem the jury saw through that in uner 4 hours. Braunstein is obviously mentally ill but there is a legal element distinguishing what he did from that of a deranged person - he was calculating. He assaulted & raped a woman, set up a situation to have her let him into her house to do so, and then ran from NYC going to hotels, flophouses and see hookers along the way only to end the chase with a...

BLAMING THE VICTIM IS SHAMEFUL I can't stand injustice. I never could. I got myself in trouble repeatedly at school for telling the truth and not knowing when to keep my mouth shut. My father, of blessed memory, had this same problem. He ended up as a Lieutenant with the Sheriff's Department where he lived. Me? I just vent about it on this blog... (and in therapy). When I worked as a paralegal there were times I had to go to court to file papers or get the clerk for a particular judge to sign off on them. I got to sit through some proceedings or parts of them that really disgusted me. But this one in the news recently is particularly heinous. Since learning about Destructive Narcissism and Sociopathy and now working with Domestic Violence victims, who, like me, were victimized by people like this - certain trials have fascinated me. O.J. was interesting but obvious after all was said and done. The BTK Killer was good. Scott Peterson was personally riveting because he w...