Delgado Replies

In Outside Inside, Frank Michelman gives me a pat on the back for two articles setting out the case for a rotten social background (“RSB”) defense. Ultimately, however, my efforts, in his eyes, at best amount to the proverbial good old college try. Because of a host of “establishment concerns,” mainstream judges will shy away from it, even in the most compelling cases. Unless criminal defendants qualify for an accepted defense such as insanity or diminished capacity, judges will see a severely deficient childhood as bearing only on the morality of punishment, not its legality.