Recently I happened to read about a court case Frendak v. United States.

In this case, Paula Frendak shot a coworker. After four competency hearings, the defendant was adjudicated competent, although in the opinion of several experts she was likely insane when she committed the crime.

However, Frendak refused to use the insanity defense as she felt a hospital was worse than any prison. She attempted suicide, went on hunger strikes and refused medication to underscore her protests. However, she was forced by the court to plead insanity. Thus, in this case, a competent defendant was not allowed to reject the use of the insanity defense.
Later on, this court judgment was overturned in the appeal court and she was allowed to refuse the insanity defense.

What was interesting in this case and many other homicide cases, is how much they depend on the opinion of a forensic psychologist, whose opinion serves as a demarcation line between sanity and lunacy, between a prison sentence, a mental institution or a death warrant.

This contest was indicative of how much each of the contest participants trusted the narrator of the prompt.

Ms. White clearly experienced some abnormal hallucinations like visions. The question at this point was – were these hallucinations were “normal” in the scheme of things that a mind can experience post-surgically, or they were uncommon enough to explain them only with fantastic development of events.

As we can observe, the opinions of the local “forensic psychologists” here divided. @ phil-glaz, @sarez and I evaluated Ms. White's internal monologue as hallucinations, while @zeleiracordero and @raj808 felt that they required a fantastic explanation.

Fun contest! Hip Hip hooray to @bananafish!