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Lieutenant Manion's Defense In Anatomy Of A Murder

559 Words3 Pages

In the movie, Anatomy of A Murder, Lieutenant Manion kills the owner of an Inn who allegedly beat and raped his wife. Manion claimed that he did not remember doing it and that he “must have been mad” when he committed the crime. Upon seeing an Army psychiatrist, Lieutenant Manion, and his attorney, Paul Biegler, entered a plea of not guilty by reason of irresistible impulse. However, this plea was not easy for Biegler to prove and was not a defense that was commonly used or even heard of. Manion was assessed by the Army psychiatrist who concluded that the Lieutenant was temporarily insane at the time of the murder. The psychiatrist said that Manion had a dissociative reaction which caused an irresistible impulse to kill the man that raped his wife. There were several aspects of Manion’s defense that felt like a scam. However, first we will assess the aspects that seemed valid. Manion said that he did not remember shooting Quill, that he only vaguely remembered someone speaking to him after the shooting, and that he only realized that he shot Quill after he got home and saw that his gun didn’t have the bullets in it that he loaded soon after his wife got home and calmed down. It could be valid that he did indeed have a dissociative reaction in which he did not realize all those things. …show more content…

We also see a record of Manion being aggressive and violent with his wife at a party and the night that she came home from being raped. Another aspect that made his defense seem like a scam was presented by the doctor who expounded on dissociative reaction. The doctor said that to have a dissociative reaction, one must also have a psychoneurotic condition, which Manion did not present. Therefore, it seems like Manion knew what he was doing when he shot Quill and only went along with the defense to get out of going to

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