Lewis became the focus of some public ridicule for her rambling style, and afterwards some of the jurors said she had damaged the defense case. Lewis has proposed a conspiracy theory to explain why she may have been deliberately undermined, based on the prosecutor sharing the same rare name as a former CIA operative and the possibility that her questioning of Shawcross's army days might have risked revealing he had been put through MKUltra-type brainwashing experiments. Lewis was also hired by the defense for the Washington Beltway Sniper John Allen Muhammad and assessed his mental state. Her report concluded that he had psychotic schizo-affective disorder and had brain dysfunction. Lewis, along with a The New York Times journalist who reported an interview with her prior to Muhammad's capture, has been criticized by the head of the American Psychiatric Association and National Alliance on Mental Illness for having asserted that the man is "clearly psychotic" and probably manic. Lewis defended her media work and referred to another article that said she was one of the few to have gotten it right; however, for that Newsweek article she was quoted: "He may be talking nonsense, but that doesn't mean he's delusional." Views on justice and death penalty Lewis is skeptical of the death penalty, but not necessarily the sentencing of inmates to life in order to protect the public. Neither Lewis nor Pincus believe the death penalty works as a deterrent. Lewis believes that the quest for justice often leads many prosecutors, judges, jurors to overlook things that could be considered mitigating circumstances. She believes that this leads to overlooking the root causes of crime and prevents long-term solutions that will help reduce child abuse and prevent more abused children from becoming killers. Play plagiarism accusation In 2004 Lewis alleged that British playwright Bryony Lavery's hit Broadway play Frozen, particularly the character of 'Agnetha', a psychiatrist sent to evaluate a serial killer, was based on thematic similarities with her book Guilty by Reason of Insanity and verbatim extracts from a New Yorker article about her by Malcolm Gladwell. Lewis hired a lawyer and began preparing for a lawsuit, including getting Gladwell to sign his copyright over to her for her case. The story was covered internationally in 2004 and Lavery states it has damaged her career. However, Gladwell himself has since said he was not comfortable signing over his copyright to Lewis