Attorney for the Damned : A Lawyer's Life with the Criminally Insane Book

In a series of brilliantly told and haunting stories, Denis Woychuk, a prominent lawyer for the criminally insane, recounts some of his most dramatic and bizarre cases in a trenchant assessment of a legal system gone awry. As the stories unfold, we witness an idealistic young lawyer become ever more troubled as he succeeds, often through his brilliant courtroom strategy, in gaining freedom for men who leave only to kill again. In another story we are told of a young and confused immigrant who, having committed a minor crime, is misdiagnosed as a psychotic because of his faulty English and languishes for years in the back wards of a state-run psychiatric prison. Through such cases, we see exactly how both the perpetrator and the public are failed as often-dangerous people find their way back to society while victims of the system remain locked behind hospital doors. We also hear rare stories of redemption, including that of the cannibal killer who meets a psychotic murderess in the state psychiatric hospital. They fall in love, are eventually released, marry and now live peaceably in one of New York's nicer suburbs.

In this series of haunting stories, a prominent lawyer for the criminally insane recounts some of his most dramatic and bizarre cases in a trenchant assessment of a legal system gone awry. True case histories show how the criminal and the public are failed as often dangerous people find their way back to society while victims of the system remain locked away.