Any One of Us: Stories of Ordinary People, Unintentional Crimes, and the Law at its Limit

What if you committed a crime you didn't remember?

It’s a cold, grey morning. You open the front door, slightly hungover and fairly exhausted, and stop in your tracks. Lying bloodied and beaten on the driveway is the motionless body of your father. He is dead – killed in a violent frenzy. You don’t remember what happened, and in fact you never will, but, you will soon discover, you are the one who killed him…

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In Any One of Us, barrister Ramya Nagesh reveals that the line between good and evil can be far more blurred than we care to admit. Through the lens of gripping real-life cases, Nagesh challenges our perceptions of conventional morality and culpability, reveals the limitations of the justice system, and invites us to ask the question: could it happen to me?

Drawing on trial documents, personal experience, and expert testimony, Nagesh navigates the complexities of sleepwalking, hormonal imbalances, and other unforeseen circumstances that have led to tragic outcomes. Cases include a woman who was found by a court to have been suffering from severe pre-menstrual syndrome when she accelerated her car at her boyfriend and crushed him to death. Or a man who could never have predicted that his night terrors would make him unconsciously strangle to death the love of his life.

From the courtroom to the crime scene, Any One of Us invites readers on a thought-provoking journey that confronts uncomfortable truths about human nature.