“He Speaks Not, Yet he Says Everything; What of That?” Text, Context, and Pretext in State v. Jeffrey Dahmer.

Greg O'Meara,, Marquette University

Abstract

In State v. Dahmer, the defense attempted to lead the jury through a series of inferences that would have them conclude that the defendant was insane at the time he committed each of the fifteen murders charged by the State of Wisconsin. They portrayed a client who cooperated fully with the authorities and who was, in the final analysis, too disturbed to be responsible for his actions. To make this approach work, they needed narrative distance between Dahmer and the jury so he would not be interrogated about his prior inconsistent statements and meticulous planning of the killings. Though silence had worked as Dahmer’s strategy previously, the weight of the evidence simply subverted that scheme one last time. In the final analysis, his actions spoke louder than his wordlessness, and the jury spoke in his place