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I respect lawyers for what they can do without a conscience. Twist facts, make a client look better by slinging mud on a witness, or as was the case over 130 years ago, use a psycho defense based on unproven science to free a woman who was obviously guilty of murder.

My disdain is only partially truthful. Push come to indictment, I’d be looking for a lawyer that could get me off even if I committed a crime in front of a busload of Japanese tourists with video cameras

While looking for information on Google, my surfing the Internet often gets me sidetracked and I come across a gem or two of unbelievable, but true history. This story is a good example.

Short version: In 1881, a young virgin girl of 18, Lastania Abarta got sweet talked into putting out for a rich, eligible bachelor twice her age. She kills him when he refuses to marry her, after promising to do so. She doesn’t go to prison.

The more complete story follows:

Francisco “Chico” Forster is shot to death on downtown Los Angeles street by his jilted lover, eighteen-year old Lastania Abarta. The forty-year old Forster was the son of wealthy Los Angeles land developer and considered one of the city’s most eligible bachelors despite his reputation for womanizing and poorly treating women.

Abarta worked in her parent’s pool hall, where she sang, played the guitar, and met freqent customer Forster. On March 14, she was invited to perform at a party given by Pio Pico, California’s last Mexican governor. The former politician had just lost a sizable tract of land near San Diego to Chico Forster’s father. During a song, Abarta changed the lyrics to mock Pico and then ran off with Forster to the Moiso Mansion Hotel.

Apparently, the couple made love after Forster promised to marry Abarta. But when Forster disappeared and didn’t return with a ring or priest to perform the ceremony, Abarta and her sister Hortensia started to comb the city in search of him. They finally found him at a race track gambling and dragged him to their carriage for a trip to the church.

But Forster got out of the cab on the way, the women closely following behind until Abarta suddenly pulled out a gun and shot him through the eye. Outraged by his son’s untimely death, Forster’s father hired a special prosecutor to make sure that Abarta was properly punished.

Abarta’s lawyers tried a novel defense, they ran with America’s 1880s obsession with “female hysteria.” Medical theories of the time held that women could be driven crazy because of their reproductive system. Their first step was to introduce in evidence the blood stained sheets from the hotel where Abarta lost her virginity to Forster. The lawyers then trotted out no less than seven medical experts who expounded their hysteria theories. They testified that Abarta was clearly displaying classic “hysterical symptoms” caused “because her brain was undoubtedly congested with blood,” when she killed Forster.

However, the most important testimony came from Dr. Joseph Kurtz who received applause from the spectators in the courtroom when he stated that “Any virtuous woman when deprived of her virtue would go mad, undoubtedly.”

The jury, all men of course, took just twenty minutes to acquit Abarta, who left town and disappeared out of sight.

Maybe one day a lawyer will defend some guy using a “Blue Balls” Defense.

‘Cause you know how all that testosterone can back up in the pipes and make a dude overly aggressive and angry toward someone from outside the neighborhood who keeps parking in the spot that was clearly saved with a garbage can.