Witnessing for the Defense: The Adversarial Court and Narratives of Criminal Behavior in Nineteenth-Century Russia

Abstract

“Witnessing for the Defense” takes readers into the adversarial courtroom in postreform Russia. A fundamentally new type of public arena, the courtroom allowed representatives of the state (prosecutors) to debate with professionals (defense attorneys and expert witnesses), each side making a case about criminal behavior and justice for society (jurors and the readers who followed reports on trial) to judge. Analyzing how the defense changed over time for the same type of crime, the murder of a lover by the woman whom he had jilted, Louise McReynolds shows how the courtroom provided a place for the discussion of newly emerging concepts and theories from the social sciences. Psychiatry is especially important because it was raising questions of individual personality and personal responsibility that had the potential to undermine the status quo. Thus this article shifts the focus on the legal reforms of 1864 from politics to culture.