The Blank Stare

A farmer had a falling-out with his landlord over a sugar-cane crop he was making for him on rented land. About a week later he took a gun and shot the landlord, who was unarmed and peacefully picking cotton in a field. He then went to town, surrendered and confessed. At his federal murder trial his main defence was insanity: two doctors who watched him in jail described him sitting on a spittoon, gazing at the floor as if at something that was not there, with a vacant, expressionless stare. An earlier conviction had been set aside over errors in the insanity instructions. At the retrial the defence again challenged the rulings on expert evidence and the insanity instructions.