Morgan Freeman

His expertise covers a wide range of criminal behavior and deviance, but if the public knows him for anything, it's as the man who convinces juries that serial killers should be held accountable for their crimes, not acquitted on grounds of insanity. Dietz offers the parallel of villagers centuries ago who find a horribly mutilated corpse, with human tracks in the snow around it. "Do they conclude a man did this?" Dietz asks. "No. It had to be a man-beast. Hence the vampire. Hence the werewolf. Other times and places: Would a man do this? No. Only a witch. Only Satan. In our time: Would a man do this? No. Only an insane person would do this."

Dietz, however, believes that many serial killers, though genuinely disordered, are in control of themselves when they kill and are thus legally responsible. They are not psychotic: they know what they're doing, they know it's wrong, and they could stop themselves if they wanted.

Dietz takes the popular media and their effects on behavior seriously. He believes that slasher movies, violent television programs, and news reports--especially television news reports--contribute to American society's problems with serial killers, sexual sadists, stalkers, and product tamperers.

When he studied material collected by the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, of which he was a member in 1985-86, Dietz became concerned not about the sexual content of pornography but about its violent imagery. The public should stop worrying about nudity, he believes, and concentrate on how often movies, television programs, and magazines combine images of violence with images of sex.

He does not favor government regulation of film or television content, but he does favor litigation to force studios and other purveyors of mass media to regulate themselves: "I think the entertainment industry should be liable for the harm it does, like any other industry.