But he did give the usual abuse excuse.

Juries, he said, are "tired of the abuse excuse."

What Alan Dershowitz, the criminal lawyer and Harvard Law School professor, calls the "abuse excuse" also makes an appearance.

As he sees it, the growing popularity of abuse excuses (and juries' willingness to buy them) are actually connected to America's "ever-toughening attitudes toward law and order."

By ratifying vigilantism, Mr. Dershowitz suggests, abuse excuses encourage lawlessness and an endless cycle of violence.

An abuse excuse, he says, is a "legal tactic by which criminal defendants claim a history of abuse as an excuse for violent retaliation."

To him, an abuse excuse weakens the law by undermining genuine defenses, like severe mental illness.

Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz has described the abuse excuse as a "lawless invitation to vigilantism".

We were treated by the pundits and politicians of every persuasion to a Freudophobic scream of outrage about abuse excuses and psychobabble.

"This puts an end to the abuse excuse," she said, referring to Mr. Wagner's drug and alcohol use.