1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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On December 7, 1993, a mass shooting occurred aboard a Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) train in Garden City Park, New York. As the train arrived at the Merillon Avenue station, passenger Colin Ferguson began firing at other passengers with a semi-automatic pistol. Six of the victims were killed and nineteen others were wounded before Ferguson was tackled and held down by other passengers on the train.
His lawyers Kunstler and Kuby proposed an innovative defense: Ferguson had been driven to temporary insanity by a psychiatric condition they termed "black rage." Kunstler and Kuby argued Ferguson had been driven insane by racial prejudice and could not be held criminally liable for his actions, even though he had committed the killings. The attorneys compared it to the utilization of the battered woman defense, posttraumatic stress disorder, and the child abuse syndrome in other cases to negate criminal liability.
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