NYC Psychiatric Defense Lawyer

Proven Success In New York Psychiatric Defense Cases

According to the New York Times in 2017, in those cases in which there is a contested insanity plea (where the prosecutor and court are unwilling to agree to such a resolution), only one-120th of one percent of such cases end in a successful, not responsible defense. The Times also reported in 2013 that according to New York Criminal Justice reports, only seven defendants out of almost 6,000 charged with murder since 2003 had juries find them not responsible due to mental disease or defect.  The difficulty in prevailing with an insanity plea even where there is a documented and lengthy history of psychiatric hospitalizations may be due to jurors’ understandable aversion to allowing a proven killer to “get away with it” — as if that is what awaits such an individual.  It may also be explained by the strict requirement under New York law that the defense shows that, at the time of the homicide, the accused was so sick and delusional that he or she either failed to appreciate the nature or consequences of his or her actions or failed to appreciate the wrongfulness of such actions.  Thus, in many cases, despite evidence of decades of diagnoses, treatment, hospital admissions, and anti-psychotic medication, if at the moment of truth the defendant sufficiently appeared to understand what he was doing would lead to his arrest, juries almost always reject the insanity defense even while crediting that the defendant was severely mentally ill.  

In the trial of Alejandro Morales, Fred Sosinsky presented expert testimony from two respected forensic psychiatrists who opined that as a consequence of Morales’s psychotic disorder, he failed to substantially appreciate that his repeated stabbing of the nine-year-old child was wrong and instead believed that he was defending himself against an impending sexualized assault of him by the “monstrous” demon that was the boy.  NYC mental health lawyer, Fred Sosinsky, skillfully attacked the prosecution’s evidence that Morales, although sick, knew what he was doing was wrong.  And Fred used the videotaped police interrogation that produced a confession to demonstrate the inner turmoil evident in Morales’ speech and tics.  The jury’s acceptance of the insanity defense came in spite of proof that Morales got rid of the murder weapon, bloody clothing and footwear and other incriminating items, that he attempted to flee from the vicinity,  that he had waited until other family members had left the residence and become angered at the attention paid to the boy by Morales’ mother. 

Notably, Fred Sosinsky also represented David Tarloff in two murder trials that received enormous media attention.  Tarloff, a deeply troubled paranoid schizophrenic, was accused of murdering a prominent Upper East Side psychologist who shared a professional suite with a psychiatrist who Tarloff also attempted to kill.  That psychiatrist had, decades earlier first diagnosed Tarloff with schizoaffective disorder.  More than 20 psych- admissions later, while off his medications, Tarloff delusionally schemed to take the psychiatrist hostage and force him to turn over a large enough sum of money to enable Tarloff to finance the removal of his elderly mother from the Brooklyn nursing home where she resided for years and fly off to Hawaii together where he would himself care for her.  At the first trial of Tarloff, the jury deadlocked 9 to 3 in favor of accepting the insanity defense.   Tarloff was convicted at the second trial despite overwhelming evidence of his psychotic delusions.