Soon after Steven Masover, 19, held up a bank in Menlo Park, Calif., last November, he was apprehended with $78,000 of the bank's cash, an unloaded gun, a fake bomb and three hostages. In court, Masover, who was valedictorian of his class in high school, relied on a bizarre defense: he had stolen the money, but only to invest it in colonies in outer space as a way for earthlings to escape pollution and overpopulation. Moreover, he planned to pay the money back in 20 years or so, making the heist a forced loan rather than a robbery.
The defense argued that...
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