EDITOR’S NOTE: Reporter Dean Shalhoup will be blogging from the courtroom with reactions to Christopher Gribble’s trial. Follow the trial live at nashuatelegraph.com.

10:18 a.m.

The roots of the so-called “insanity defense” we know today go back to the 18th century, when society and law enforcement reached a sort of compromise, agreeing that while criminals should be punished for their crimes, those who are ill should receive treatment for their illness.

The compromise, therefore, reflects the belief that the law should not punish defendants who are mentally incapable of controlling their conduct.

10:46 a.m.

A week before Christmas in 2008, Nashua firefighters responded to what appeared to be a fairly routine house fire on Natick Street, in a neighborhood off Broad Street not far from Nashua High School North.

While putting the fire out, however, they made a gruesome discovery: Inside lay the body of a 68-year-old man.

The victim was Franklin Phillips Sr., who, fire and police officials would soon learn, was bludgeoned to death by his grandson, Michael Phillips, who then set the house on fire.

Though a judge later ruled the 20-year-old was fit to stand trial, prosecutors and defense reached a plea bargain after experts diagnosed him with schizotypal personality disorder, attention deficit disorder and Asperger’s syndrome, mental illnesses that “grossly and demonstrably impaired his ability to perceive and understand reality” when he killed his grandfather, it was reported at the time.

In line with sentencing guidelines, a judge ruled that Phillips is dangerous and committed him to the State Prison’s Secure Psychiatric Unit. There, he gets a hearing every five years to see if he’s fit to be released.

Should Christopher Gribble achieve his goal of being found not guilty by reason of insanity, he would follow the same path as Phillips.

11:15 p.m.

Historically, the first legal test for insanity, at least the first to draw broad attention, goes back to 1843, according to a legal history report on the Cornell University website. Known as the McNaughton case, it involved Englishman Daniel McNaughton, who shot and killed the secretary of the British prime minister, believing that the prime minister was conspiring against him.

The court acquitted McNaughton “by reason of insanity,” and he was placed in a mental institution for the rest of his life. But the resulting public uproar prompted Queen Victoria to order the court to develop a stricter test for insanity.

So came the “McNaughton pule,” a new standard that created a presumption of sanity, unless the defense could prove “at the time of committing the act, the accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or, if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong.”

The McNaughton rule went on to become the standard for insanity.

11:44 a.m.

“Irresistable impulse” is how the so-called Durham rule is described. It is named for Monte Durham, a 23-year-old Washington, D.C.-area man convicted of housebreaking in 1953. But attorneys for Durham, who had been in and out of prison and mental institutions since he was 17, appealed.

Although the district court judge ruled that Durham’s attorneys failed to prove he didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, the federal appellate judge chose to use the case to reform the McNaughton rule, according to Cornell University’s website. Fast-forward to today: Guess which state is the only one that still uses the Durham rule? Yep, New Hampshire, which fancies itself as unique. Now the rule’s called the Durham product test, the nutshell definition of which states the defense must prove that the defendant committed a crime as a result of a mental disease or defect and the jurors must decide on their own what constitutes mental illness. As for Monte Durham, the appellate judge, citing leading psychiatrists and jurists of the day, stated that the McNaughton rule was based on “an entirely obsolete and misleading conception of the nature of insanity.”

He overturned Durham’s conviction and established a new rule.

The Durham rule states “that an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect.”

The Durham rule was eventually rejected by the federal courts, because it cast too broad a net. Alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, and drug addicts had successfully used the defense to defeat a wide variety of crimes. Once again, New Hampshire stands alone.

2:10 p.m.

The name rang a bell.

One name in particular that Tamara Gribble mentioned while testifying Monday instantly grabbed my attention.

Under questioning by the defense just before the noon break, she told of how devastated her son Christopher was upon losing a close friend to cancer at the beginning of 2007.

That friend would have been Stanford Larsen, whom I interviewed and wrote about on two occasions in late 2006 and again after his passing only weeks into 2007.

Although Stanford had gone to Nashua High School South and Gribble lived in Brookline, the boys had their LDS community and Boy Scouts in common. From the moment I met him, I regarded Stanford as an unusually courageous, strong young man who, despite a near-zero chance prognosis, stayed positive and vowed he’d beat the cancer.

It didn’t surprise me a bit that Tamara Gribble said her son was devastated by the death of his friend Stanford – he’s one of those kids you always remember and admire. Lots of people, myself included, were also greatly saddened by his passing.

2:49 p.m.

Christopher Alexander John Gribble is his full name. One of his attorneys, Donna Brown, asked him how he felt. He said “agitated,” she asked why, he said because his mother was just on the stand and lying about him.

It made him very upset, he said.

4 p.m.

Gribble continued to detail things that “always stick with you” about his mother.

Sometimes his dad held him down but usually she just did it herself, Gribble said about the regular beating sessions he and his brother sustained from their mother.

Gribble now tells of how he fantasized about killing her. “All sorts of ways … like cutting little pieces of her off bit by bit … hearing her scream … throwing boiling water over her sensitive parts … bending her arms in the wrong direction … not letting her eat or drink anything … maybe putting sugar or whatever so crows would come and peck at her,” he said.

All the time he was having those fantasies, he said, he went to church and Boy Scouts like normal. “I didn’t really draw any connection,” he said.

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 31 or dshalhoup@cabinet.com. This is a partial transcript of Dean’s live blog from the courtroom. To read the full transcript, visit www.nashuatelegraph.com