An Irresistible Impulse

Very funny? Really. Bobbitt claims she was temporarily insane at the time of the crime. It was a story about a woman who said that her husband had been abusing her in terrible, horrific ways for years, and she did something horrible, something she was found not guilty of doing. What kind of evidence do you need? You show up in court with your dick in your hand and nobody gets convicted of anything. This week on the thread, why did Lorena Bobbitt do it? And did she deserve to

get away with it? Listen to my story about a man named John Poor ex Marine win A little fraction gone big one night African win w whout DOFs back up Win's wife of Na Penis that is clean cut. I'm Sean Braswell And This is the Thread a podcast where we unraveled the stories behind some of the most important lives and events in history to learn more about

the surprising connections between them Today. The case of Lorraina Bobbitt, her attorneys claimed she was so out of her mind after suffering from years of domestic abuse, that she could not resist the impulse to wound her husband while he slept. The shocking story of Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt from the early nineteen nineties remains seared into the memories of millions of Americans, and twenty five years later, it has returned to the spotlight, including in the new docuseries Lorena.

But the incredible tale is also part of a larger story, one shaped by a controversial criminal defense, legal insanity. So what's the Thread? In the last episode, we heard about the horrific shooting in a Colorado movie theater in twelve James Holmes murdered twelve injured dozens more. He was mentally ill by almost all accounts, but that wasn't enough to

mount a successful insanity defense. One of the main reasons that proving legal insanity can be tough today for defendants like Holmes was the public reaction to the outcomes in some earlier cases, cases like a rain of Bobbitt's. In the early morning hours of June twenty six, year old John Wayne Bobbitt awoke to every man's worst nightmare. John wakes up out of a dead sleep. Marissa Kashino is

a scene your editor at Washingtonian magazine. She spent a lot of time covering the Bobbit case for its twenty fifth anniversary. He told me that he thought at first that it was like a Freddy Krueger thing. Freddy Krueger was a famous movie serial killer from the nineteen eighties, the one who had razors for fingers. He thought he was having a nightmare. He just sort of didn't understand

what was going on. He was totally disoriented. John had been out with a friend and returned late that night to the apartment he and Lorraine shared in Manassas, Virginia. So John's out clubbing. He comes home about three in the morning. Lorena says, you know, he wakes her up. He smells like alcohol, and he climbs on top of her. So Lorena says that she said clearly that she did not want to have sex, and that John ignored her and went ahead and had sex with her anyway, um,

and then promptly passed out. Next Lorena would later claim she went to the kitchen for a glass of water, She sees a knife, she grabs it. Um, she goes back into the bedroom, and you know, the rest is sort of history. She cuts off his penis while he is asleep. Lorena later claims she had no memory of her moment. Insteed, she doesn't really come to until she goes downstairs and gets into her car and realizes that

she can't drive because her hands are full. So she looks down and she's got a bloody knife in one hand and she has his penis in the other hand, And that, she says, is when it kind of hits her. You know what has happened. It's the middle of the night, and loren is not sure what to do. She sort of freaks out. She starts driving in her kind of state of trauma and shock. She throws the penis out the window of the car into a grassy field that

is near a seven eleven. Lorena later told police where she thought she'd thrown the dismembered organ, and investigators were able to recover it and the seven eleven, so they bring it inside and um. According to one of the surgeons who later operated on John, they packed the penis in a hot dog bag full of ice, and that is how it arrived to the emergency room at the hospital. The doctors in the emergency room had never seen anything like John's injury, and no one was sure if the

preserved member could be reattached. So it's an eight or nine hour surgery, very intense, and the surgeons say that, you know, they kind of held their breath and at the end they took the tourniquet off, and the organ pinked up and the blood flow was flowing, and they sort of breathed a sigh of relief that everything, uh seemed to be in working order. Pretty soon, the tales of John's unusual surgery and Lorraine's unspeakable act we're all

over the news. Within days, Lorraine and John Wayne Bobbitt were global celebrities. Pretty quickly. The Bobbit's story became, you know, a huge media circus, tabloid sensation. You know, everybody wanted to know more about it. Just one of the most talked about stories of the year, the case has struck un sore. Details of a marriage gone berserve Bobby's could only get more attention if they were starring in a

TV movie. Lorena and John had to quickly figure out how to navigate that world, which you know, as a marine slash warehouse worker and a manicurist they were completely unfamiliar with. I mean, this thing threw them into the limelight in a way that neither of them, I think, you know, could have ever previously imagined. The Bobbit's marriage and lives were opened and dissected for public consumption. Lorraina Bobbitt originally Lareda Gallo, was from Ecuador and also spent

part of her childhood in Venezuela. She was a young immigrant to Virginia when she met John Wayne Bobbitt, and at first Lorena was very smitten with him. He was a marine, he was very nice to her while they were dating. She says that John was, you know, her first real boyfriend, her first you know, sort of everything. In less than a year, they were married, and their marriage was chaotic, to say the least. Um they were scraping by. John at that point was a warehouse worker

and Lorena was a manicurist. She worked a nail salon. Like many young married couples, the Bobbit's had a complicated relationship, But what the media and the late night comedians mostly wanted to focus on was John's penis, even if much of what they said were little resemblance to what actually happened. I'm kind of curious how you lose your dick and not notice bring do you suddenly wake up a Kendall I mean picture to Citiot out into Woods three and

the more and looking into pushes. Even with his manhood being discussed on every channel, John stayed quiet. Meanwhile, Lorena hired a publicist to tell her side of the story. Vanity Fair was the magazine that got the first full length feature interview with Lorena. Um Loreno went and did a big photo shoot at her that lawyer's house, in her bathing suits. In the article and elsewhere, Lorena claimed that John raped her that night and was abusive for years.

The claims sparked a nationwide debate. As the case went to trial, it was billed as a battle of the sexes. I must say one of the stunning things was the circus outside. Barriers put up with women on one side, men on another. This is John's attorney at the time, Greg Murphy. There was such a huge crowd out in front that we had to arrange with the sheriff and the court so we could get through and into the

court house. Hundreds of reporters and caravans of satellite trucks converged on the historic Civil War town Manassas, Virginia, not far from Washington, d C. The Oscar Meyer wienermobile also turned up, so did a local rock band who played fifty Ways to Cleave Your Lover. And then there were people in the in the community capitalizing on it. People selling underwear, underpants, boxer shorts that said Manassas to cut above, um, a plastic tube that was a uh a bob at

penis protector. I mean, there were t shirts that said the love hurts. I mean, there was so much going on out there. Cable television, including a new station called Court TV, brought Lorraine's trial into homes across the nation. It was probably the first case to go literally viral over the internet. UM, and it was about eight months before o J. Simpsons case, which really took off. Lorraino's trial began twenty five years ago in January, and at

the heart of it was the Insanity Defense. Tired of standing idly by while the world goes crazy, Diane Lockhart is, and so is the cast of the critically acclaimed legal drama The Good Fight. Joined the Fight by watching the new season, now streaming exclusively on CBS All Access. Tune in to see if Diane Lockhart will lead the resistance in a new, post factual world, a world where the lawyers with the best stories triumph over the lawyers with the best facts. Season three of The Good Fight throws

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Season three of the Good Fight. The Resistance starts now join the Fight by heading on over to CBS dot com slash thread to redeem your free trial of CBS all Access to watch the new season of The Good Fight, now streaming exclusively on CBS All Access. That CBS dot com slash thread to redeem your free trial of CBS all Access. The malicious Wounding trial of Lorraina Bobbitt began today in the Nassas, Virginia. She has admitted emasculating her

husband last June. Earlier. Today, she pleaded not guilty to the charge. This is believed to be a first step in a defense of insanity. The charge against Lorna carried a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. She also faced deportation Marissa Kashino again. The prosecution was out to prove that Lorena was of sound mind when she um when she cut off John's penis, that it was a malicious act, that she had essentially attacked John not in

self defense, but out of revenge that fateful night. According to prosecutors, Lorena acted out of anger, and she admitted that fact to the police. She told him she did it because her husband didn't wait for her to have an orgasm. He was selfish. She said, so I pulled back the sheets and then I did it, Greg Murphy again. They interviewed her again the next day to make sure they understood that this is the detective as to the reason she gave, and she repeated, because he have orgasm

and not wait for me. Um, That's obviously not what she testified to. Prosecutors argued that letting Lorena off the hook for her action because she was upset or angry with set a dangerous precedent. She was angry and she retaliated against But you know, folk, we don't live in a society that is governed by revenge. We don't live in a society and which whoever has the biggest knights. Lawyers for the defense could not argue that Lorena had not done the deed, but they could argue she lacked

criminal intent. So Lorena's defense team put on a defense called Irresistible Impulse. It's a kind of temporary insanity defense. So basically the idea is that in that moment, Loreno was so um kind of traumatized by all of the past assaults and alleged abuse that she had suffered at the hands of her husband, that she snapped Lorna's lawyers argued that her four year marriage to John was a

reign of terror. The evidence will show get in her mind, it was his penis from which she could not escape a number of witnesses corroborated Lorraine's stories of marital abuse, including that momentous night in June. Their next door neighbor touched off. I know what he called sounds of painful sex coming from the Bobby's apartment the night. But the most compelling testimony came from Lorena herself. Lorena was very

emotional on the stand. She cried, um, she you know, went into detail about the horrific things that she claimed to have suffered throughout her marriage to John. He kicked me and my stone like and he threw me to the wall. It was like a side side karate kick. That was really scared. I was really afraid. John, Lorena claimed, was also violent on the night in question. I said I don't want to have sex, and he wouldn't listen to me. He wouldn't let me, let me go. Then

John fell asleep and Lorena went into the kitchen. She testified about what went through her mind when she saw the knife. I remember a lot of things. He said to me, I don't remember the first star every me. There was too so many pictures of my head. I remember then salt, the debut words, he told me, I remember everything. Really, you know, I think she really won

a lot of the public over. You know, the fact that the that the trial was televised really helped at least a large part of the population sympathized with her. The clerk at the courthouse told me that after Lorena testified, the mail just poured in for her, and Lorena also became a symbol for a movement larger than herself. Frankly, that was you know, twenty years ago, there wasn't a

lot of attention on on domestic violence. Kim Gandhi as President and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, there's no question that there was a tremendous opportunity created by the trial. Basically, take the advantage of the media circus to try to draw attention to something that was a tremendous, damaging problem two countless women all over the country. But being the object of widespread public sympathy was not

enough for Lorena to avoid a guilty verdict. Her lawyers had to convince Virginia jurors she was out of her mind when she wounded her husband. It was probably one of the most bizarre acts that has happened in this countrey. In a low, low term, everything about this case is crazy and bizarre. This is a classic case of irresistible impulse.

The defense put on an irresistible impulse in sanity defense attorney Greg Murphy again in Virginia, there's not a real definition of what that might be, um, but it is a defense that's allowed. And Uh, the irresistible impulse is that it's in a moment of passion, you lose control of yourself and you act out and you do something

that is chronical. But it's an impulse that is not easy to prove because in order to put on that defense of irresistible impulse, a defendant really has to have been diagnosed with some kind of mental illness or disorder. And that meant the experts needed to testify. Both prosecutors and defense lawyers called psychologists and psychiatrists to testify to the state of Mrs Bobbitt's mental health. Defense lawyers and experts argue that Lorrain is suffered from depression, post traumatic

stress disorder and battered woman syndrome. They claim that she finally lost touch with reality after being raped that night. She had an acute UH deterioration of the mental state at that time and became psychotics. The prosecution psychiatrists saw it differently. We're talking about an impulse that someone has, but they cannot stop themselves from doing it because the disease of the mind impairs their ability to control themselves. In this case, the impulse is clear, it's anger, and

it's cut off her husband's penis. But there's nothing here indicating that she can't control herself. The jury left to deliberate at the end of the two week trial. They returned after just seven hours to announce a verdict. We the jury farmed the defendant, Lorena Leonore bob not feel delicious wounding as charged in the indictment by reason of insanity Marissa Kasha. The jury found Lorena not guilty by

a reason of insanity. John obviously felt very differently. He felt like everything had been you know, misconstrued, you know, he had been totally misrepresented, uh, and that she had gotten off, you know, scott free. There was another side to the sordid story, John Wayne Bobbitt's it got lost in the media circus, late night jokes and Lorna's tearful televised testimony. John's lawyer, Greg Murphy. If you looked at the transcript of his trial versus her trial, you'll find

two very different set of facts. That's right. John had a trial too before Lorraine's, but it didn't get nearly the attention that hers did. There's a lot involved in this case, enormous number of facts that or more people don't pay any or haven't paid any attention to. But the one saient piece is the burning question why did she do it? Up next the trial of John Wayne Bobbitt and the light it sheds on why Lorrena did it and whether she was temporarily insane at the time.

You know, every good litigator is going to do his own assessment of whether the clients telling the truth. John Wayne Bobitt's lawyer, Greg Murphy again, and well, it's not perfect. With enough experience, you tend to trust your own judgment, and I had felt that John was telling me the truth. Murphy's instinct also told him there were problems with the

Rain's story. I had a history of about fifteen or twenty years of representing women who had been abused, having dealt with and counseled and helped battered women for so many years, or rape victims, she wasn't acting like a

victim in that sense. And that includes the famous spread Lorraine did with Vanity Fair, the one that featured photos of her in her bathing suit, And that just is not the way someone who's been traumatized by being raped or battered would be looking to glamorize themselves, especially so close to the event. John's trial began a few months before Lorraine is in the fall of He was charged with marital sexual assault. So far, no one had heard much from John, and he had a very different story

about what happened that night in June. Well, you asked about the context of what occurred that night. It's not that simple, because what occurred that night probably was a result of the pattern of what had gone on for years in the relationship, and it was a relationship that outsiders might not have expected from the young, attractive marine they saw on the nightly news. It was the exact role reversal. She had a steady job, she was bringing

in the money. He wasn't doing much at the time, and it was unsatisfying to her that he was no longer this picture perfect, all American military person and now it was just lying around playing video games, watching TV, and working occasionally. Their marriage went downhill quickly. John told me that the marriage was tumultuous, that you know, they fought, but that he never physically hurt her. On the contrary, John claimed he had been the victim of phy cool abuse.

This is how John summarized it on the Steve Harvey Show a few years ago. I was ever abusive, No one ever, no one that knows me can never tell you that was ever abusive, no abusive person. And I'll believe in violence. Uh did the court. She was the one that was violent. She attacked me, She stabbed to the forks. You know, she try to run me over

the car. John claimed he was asleep on the night of his famous wounding, and he immediately held his ground to stop the bleeding and eventually got up, went into the other room awakened Robbie. Robbie saw what occurred and he took him to the hospital. Robbie Johnson was John's best friend, the one he was out with earlier that night he was sleeping on the bobb It's couch. People forget about Robbie, and then he also forget what Lorna did next, while she was still holding the knife and

the severed penis in her hand. After leaving John's bedroom with these two things in hand, she went into the living room where Robbie was asleep, and she stole a hundred dollars out of his wallet. And then she looked around and found his game boy, stole his game boy, left carrying all four things in her hands. Not exactly of the actions of a person who was traumatized by

being raped that night. Supposedly, we can't know for sure what compelled Lorena to do what she did, or whether John abused his wife for years in the manner that she claimed. John denied those claims, but there were several witnesses that testified to his abuse of Lorraina. Still, like Lorena, he was found not guilty. I'm thankful for the jury and they believed me, and uh, I just want to get on with my life, and you know, because I

got a lot of healing to do it. And the facts that came out in John's trial do cast some doubt on whether Lorena really was insane. The facts just don't fit irresistible impulse. Here she goes in and gets the knife, and then she walks out thinking, you know, clearly thinking about what she's up to. Because she goes in and steals hundred dollars in a game boy, it all seems premeditated. It doesn't seem at all to be an irresistible impulse. Newsweek took a poll shortly after the trials.

Two thirds of those surveys said Lorraine should be found guilty, but most thoughts she should receive little or no jail time. The jurors in her case, however, did not have that option. They had the insanity defense. This is Andrea Alden, author of Disorder in the Court, Morality Myth and the Insanity Defense.

It's a lot easier to accept a temporary insanity defense, I think for somebody like Lorena Bobbitt, who didn't have a long, undocumented history of mental illness um and so people were more um inclined to be sympathetic for towards her plate. Although her crime was incredibly horrific, many in the public also felt that John deserved his wound. This is Richard Bonnie, a profess sort of law and of

medicine at the University of Virginia. The basic dynamic of that case for some people is going to be he deserved it, he had it coming to him. I mean, as a matter of law, he didn't have it coming to him. There's a legal term for when members of a jury find a defendant like Lorrain of Bobbitt not guilty because they don't support punishing them even for an

action that is against the law, nullification. So the way that I think about what happened in the Rain of Bobbitt case is that by giving the insanity instruction, you know, there was an outlet for what is essentially a nullifying motivation that the jury had um and it wasn't really about the insanity defense at all. Lorrain of Bobbitt spent forty five days in a psychiatric hospital and then she was released. She was grateful to be out of the spotlight.

John on the other hand, really continued to seek the spotlight. He did a tour of radio shows, He went on the Howard Stern Show. John Wayne Bobbitt had a terrible situation. He's the guy, of course, whose wife cut off his Schween John, I'm glad you could come. And most notably, he made two porn movies one the first one was called John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut, and I think the second one was called Frank and Penis, So yeah, very classy stuff. John Wayne Bobbitt now lives with a girlfriend in Las

Vegas and works in construction. After the trials were over, Lorraina really seemed to seek normalcy. She wanted to return to a normal, quiet, anonymous life. She went back to school, she met a guy who she is still with today, and she started an organization focused on domestic violence prevention. So she has sort of, I think, tried to find the silver lighting in the situation and make some good

of it. But it was her trial itself that really started something, and I think it really forced the public to grapple with that, to talk about domestic violence in a way, uh that you know that that hadn't really been discussed. You know. The public debate was a mixed one. Kim Gandy again, the president and CEO of the National Network to in Domestic Violence. There were a lot of people who were shocked to learn that this kind of

thing goes on in people's houses. And I do think that it helped with eventual passage of the Violence Against Women Act. This is lorrain A bob It again in a interview with Steve Harvey. Well, I'm glad that after twenty two years, you still laugh about it. But something, something good has come out of my negative and people are still laughing about it, just as they have ever since it happened. And it seems that Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt are destined to live out their lives as

jokes in late night comedy routines. I think there is sort of an instinct to kind of try to make light of something when it's too horrific to really wrap your mind around. And I think that that that instinct would still be there if this happens today. But I would like to think that we would treat Lorena more as a survivor of domestic violence and assault than as a punch line. Modern juries are skeptical about the insanity defense. They're hesitant to find a defendant like Lorraina Bobbitt not

guilty when she clearly committed the acting question. In her case, they were willing to embrace it because of the trauma she had apparently suffered, but the skepticism was real. Lorraina. Bobbitt's trial came just a decade after another high profile case rocked public opinion and the legal landscape. Beneath all insanity, Please, he decided that he would assassinate Ronald Reagan when he was giving speech at the Washington Hilton. The handsome you

was that he was delusional. You know, the President was just a bit player in this drama that was being you know, played out in Hinckley's mind. In the next episode of The Threat, we explore the trial of John Hinckley Jr. The man who shot the President of the United States and claimed he did it because he was insane with love. So do you want to put your hands on a chick? Want to rob on a chick and not give consense? So just see that I am in a state of panic and you want to take

advantage Now I'm looking like a targets. All rain about It, To about It, The Rain About It. The Thread is produced by Robert Coolo, Sophia Perpetua, and me Sean braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show. This episode features Alan Barnes with a song called The Ballot of the Bobbitt Hillbillies, and Lisa Glover with a song called The Rain of Bobbitt.

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