Of Murder and Madness: A True Story

by Gerry Spence

A KILLER WITHOUT REDEMPTION...
In broad daylight in the backwater of Rawlins, Wyoming, Joe Esquibel shot his wife right between the eyes in front of eight witnesses, including his own children and a deputy sheriff with his gun drawn. It seemed an indefensible case of premeditated murder by a remorseless killer. A crime that cried out for the death penalty.

A LAWYER WHO WOULDN'T GIVE UP...
Enter Gerry Spence, the controversial, nationally renowned defense lawyer who'd never lost a case. Undeterred by the odds against him, and armed with awesome powers of persuasion, he turned the trial into an electrifying legal battle to save a man from execution. For seven years, through three trials, he fought with everything he had, until, incredibly, he achieved the Esquibel was acquitted by reason of insanity.

OF MURDER AND MADNESS ...
With riveting detail, Gerry Spence takes you behind the scenes of an unforgettable true-life courtroom drama-- and inside the mind of a murderer. It is a fascinating, unvarnished look at the wheelings and dealings that go on in the courtroom...and a chilling odyssey into the darkness of the human soul.

Genres: True Crime, Crime, Legal, Nonfiction

599 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Gerry Spence is a trial lawyer in the United States. In 2008, he announced he would retire, at age 79, at the end of the Geoffrey Fieger trial in Detroit, MI. Spence did not lose a criminal case in the over 50 years he practiced law. He started his career as a prosecutor and later became a successful defense attorney for the insurance industry. Years later, Spence said he "saw the light" and became committed to representing people, instead of corporations, insurance companies, banks, or "big business."

Reviews

[Jeff Lacy]

The first book Gerry wrote and the second published. It's probably the best written. He presents the issue of the insanity defense. It is the structure of how he goes about it that makes the book worth reading. It's not preachy, as Spence sometimes get in his later books. In this book Spence goes back and forth, from one chapter to the next. He progresses forward, tracing his client's mental illness to his mother's lifestyle in the home and how that affected his future conduct. Then Spence deals with his own mother's suicide and how that has affected since. By going through role playing, Spence tries to come to understand his client's viewpoint so that he can relate that to a jury. The book explains the insanity defense by case study and is a great memoir about a man's struggle to come to grips with a parent's suicide.

[Whitney Nelson-Wharton]

I'm a longtime Wyoming resident, somewhat familiar with the story and some of the players. I thought this would be an interesting take from a point of view I hadn't yet heard. This book had almost nothing to do with Joe Esquibel or his ex-wife and her family, instead telling the story of Gerry Spence and how exceptional and delightfully quirky he is. (His take, not mine.)

[Erika]

A beautiful, and honest book. It took bravery to write the way Spence did about his own self and his experiences. It was an accurate inside look at "Justice" in our court systems. I am a Spence fan after finishing this book.

[Bob]

What this book captures is the feeling of getting a pretty well hopeless case and of the seemingly endless dribbles of bad news as you work on a long defense preparation. Spence is an unfair narrator in one way-- he writes at length about the hopelessness of one or another turn of events, but often when Spence makes something good happen, this brilliance is like the climax of a magic trick-- it just happens. There's no explanation about what he did to make it happen.
I was going to say that "I'm concerned" about whether or not his writing this book violates Spence's duty to protect his client's confidences, but what I really mean is that I am jealous of Spence's getting away with such a tell-all book. Even if the book is kosher as to the client, I would expect that it would be actionable as to the victims, especially if Wyoming has a Son of Sam law like New York and Texas do, preventing criminals and their lawyers from profiting by books or otherwise from recounting the client's criminal acts or notoriety arising solely from their criminal acts.
Still, I gave it five stars. Another excellent book of Spence's is his memoir The Making of a Country Lawyer: An Autobiography, a better book.