The Jury Finds Alice Guilty but Accepts the Defense of Insanity

The Jury Finds Alice Guilty but Accepts the Defense of Insanity is the turning point at which Alice Espanet’s responsibility for drowning her twins is judged in two different registers: the jury finds her guilty of double murder, yet accepts that mental illness exempts her from criminal responsibility. The verdict does not undo the crime or pronounce Alice innocent. Instead, it separates the finding of guilt from the question of punishment, leaving the judge to decide what should follow.

Legal Grounds and Contested Diagnosis

The defense had set out its position before the verdict. When Carmela Basaguren appealed for Alice’s release from pretrial detention, her filing already indicated that the defense would seek an exemption on grounds of mental disorder. It invoked Article 20.1 of the Spanish Criminal Code, which exempts a person from criminal responsibility if, at the time of the offense, a psychological abnormality or disorder prevents them from understanding that the act is unlawful or acting in accordance with that understanding. The argument therefore concerned not whether Alice had killed the children, but whether her mental state meant she could be held criminally responsible.

That claim faced a serious challenge over the basis for diagnosing Alice with postpartum psychosis. During questioning, the prosecutor drew attention to the absence of an official diagnosis. The psychiatrist acknowledged that nothing established Alice’s account as fact, while maintaining that the reported disorders were consistent with his recent assessments. Asked to make the basis of his diagnosis explicit, he agreed that it rested on Alice’s behavior and on her own account. His reply stressed the difficulty of assessing such a condition by asking what other evidence could be required. The exchange brings the uncertainty into view: the defense’s psychiatric case depended on observation and testimony, not an official diagnosis independent of Alice’s account.

The Finding and Its Announcement

The verdict reaches the reader not through a courtroom scene, but through a phone call. As The Narrator rides a tram, Jakes Ruiz de Infante calls to tell her that she has missed the jury’s decision. He had recognized her from her presence at the courthouse, then used a colleague’s contact information to obtain her number. The chain of recognition and inquiry explains how he found her, but the call quickly turns to the result: the jury has accepted the defense of exemption from criminal responsibility.

The Narrator’s first response is disbelief. Jakes sharpens the apparent contradiction into a blunt formulation: Alice is guilty, but will not go to prison. At that moment, however, the sentence has not yet been decided. Jakes cautions that the judge must still determine what will replace imprisonment. The distinction matters: the jury’s decision resolves the defense of mental disorder, but it does not itself specify the practical form of Alice’s treatment or restriction.

Later, at home, The Narrator watches the verdict reduced to a brief television report. It is only the fourth or fifth item in the news bulletin. The report describes Alice as guilty of the double murder of her twins while noting that the mental-disorder defense has been accepted. The images show Alice looking into the distance, one hand resting over the other; Carmela Basaguren gives a short statement expressing measured satisfaction while awaiting the judge’s decision. The broadcast compresses a difficult legal and medical dispute into a few lines and images, a contrast with the significance the verdict has for those following the case.

Consequences in Court and Beyond

The later decision confirms that the verdict does not lead to imprisonment. The judge replaces the prison sentence with psychiatric treatment, and chooses outpatient care rather than commitment to a psychiatric institution. In an interview, this outcome is defended as appropriate to Alice’s circumstances: there are only two prison psychiatric hospitals in the country, both far away, in Alicante and Seville, and hospitalization would seriously disrupt her family. The interview also cites the conditions said to make outpatient treatment viable: Alice’s economic security, her husband’s commitment, and institutional oversight intended to ensure that she follows treatment and is rehabilitated.

That account does not settle whether the favorable outcome reflects a workable response to mental illness or the advantages of Alice’s social position. The interviewer directly raises the question of whether her status explains the sentence. The available exchange establishes that the concern is posed, not how it is finally resolved. The rationale offered for outpatient treatment thus sits beside an unresolved question about unequal access to forms of legal and psychiatric care.

The verdict also belongs to a broader history in which law has treated mothers who kill infants differently from other killers. The book recalls that, in the Victorian era, Queen Victoria intervened so women who committed infanticide would not receive the death penalty. Spain treated infanticide as a separate offense from 1822 until the 1995 Criminal Code abolished the category; earlier law tied the offense to a mother’s effort to conceal her dishonor, while later proposals referred instead to emotional tensions associated with childbirth and the puerperium. The account contrasts this history with Canada, where killing a child under one year old under a mental disturbance connected with pregnancy, childbirth, or lactation can be classified as infanticide and exempted from punishment. These comparisons illuminate the stakes of Alice’s defense without making the jury’s decision equivalent to an infanticide ruling: the case turns on the accepted mental-disorder exemption.

The Verdict in The Narrator’s Life

The news reaches The Narrator at a moment when caring for Erik, who is recovering, takes immediate precedence. After getting off the tram, she minimizes the call to Niclas, not because she intends to hide Jakes’s existence, but because she is resuming her role as a mother caring for her convalescent child. At home, Erik falls asleep, and she and Niclas order sushi. Although Niclas dislikes eating in front of the television, The Narrator switches it on, expecting the verdict to lead the broadcast. Its brief appearance, and Niclas’s apparent silence about it, leave her alone with the news.

Her response is not a public judgment on the jury but a private reckoning with time and memory. She has a little over two thousand euros in her account and roughly three months left to finish her novel. Against those immediate limits she sets the prospect of a lifetime spent trying to forget what Alice did and what the jury decided. The verdict therefore ends one stage of the case while deepening the question that has driven The Narrator’s investigation and writing: how a legal judgment can name the crime and still leave its meaning, its consequences, and the memory of it unsettled.