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Novel Theories Of Criminal Defense Based Upon The Toxicity Of The Social Environment: Urban Psychosis, Television Intoxication, And Black Rage, Patricia J. Falk

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In recent years, defendants have proffered a multitude of novel theories of criminal defense in seeking to explain their criminal behavior in terms of internal and external influences beyond their control, including biological processes, chemical reactions, intra-psychic dynamics, social conditions, and cross cultural stresses. This Article focuses on one subset of this burgeoning class of defenses: those based upon the central premise that the defendant's criminal conduct was caused, or significantly influenced, by his exposure to social environmental factors or, if you will, toxins affecting his mental functioning. While a wide panoply of toxins exist within the fabric of our …