Dirk Olin, national editor of American Lawyer magazine: The insanity defense is crazy: “The very notion of a teenager crouched in the trunk of a car assassinating people willy-nilly does seem crazed on its face. But Malvo’s courtroom tack has provoked the predictable outrage engendered by every attempt at the insanity plea (with Dennis Miller’s adolescent blather leading the pack.)

Invocations of the insanity defense often pique the public because of a widespread misperception that the plea offers an opportunity to get away with murder. Such fears are almost completely groundless. Yet they’ve already led to the intellectually dishonest construct of ‘guilty but insane’ pleas passed by legislatures in a number of states. These hybrid pleas promote a beguiling oversimplification of how society should apportion blame. Bright lines are often unavoidable in the law, but the precision of modern psychiatry demands that we stop asking juries to make medical determinations of insanity once and for all.” —Slate