For nine days the murder trial of Berlin-born Gunther Fritz Podola, 30, was postponed while a London jury considered a plea the like of which had never before been heard in an English court of law (TIME, Sept. 21). The plea: in "the very severe fright" caused by the violence of his arrest, Podola had lost his memory, and so was unfit to plead to the charge of shooting a London cop. Last week, after a procession of experts had offered conflicting medical opinion on whether Podola was, in fact, suffering from "hysterical amnesia," the jury finally decided that he was...
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