History
McGinniss and MacDonald made arrangements to work together shortly before the trial; as part of those arrangements, McGinniss was given special access to MacDonald and his legal team, even living with MacDonald during the murder trial, in return for a share of the book's profits. The book covers events until MacDonald's first appeal was rejected in 1985.
MacDonald expected that the book would show his innocence; however, like other authors MacDonald had contacted, McGinniss insisted on a signed release from MacDonald, allowing him to write freely, and the final version was precisely the opposite of what MacDonald had expected. Fatal Vision, told in a narrative format that interpolates case events with transcripts of recordings MacDonald sent McGinniss, becomes an investigation and the investigation steadily builds a case against MacDonald. As a motive, McGinniss suggests that MacDonald killed his family in a fit of psychotic rage as a result of taking amphetamines.
The Fatal Vision case, as it has come to be known, has a long legal history, not all of which was covered by the book and movie. Originally, McDonald's lawyer, Bernie Segal, was able to get the charges dismissed by a military court. Despite this, McDonald's father-in-law, Freddie Kassab, began investigating the case himself, mainly by obtaining transcripts of the closed military hearing. He convinced a government lawyer, Victor Worheide, to reopen the case, and Worheide obtained a federal indictment from a grand jury. A federal court of appeal then decided that McDonald's speedy trial rights had been violated, but this decision was set aside by the U.S. Supreme Court, leading to a jury verdict in 1979. The case went back up to the Supreme Court for another decision in 1985, when the jury verdict was affirmed. McDonald is still litigating the case and obtained a federal court order to have DNA evidence in the case re-tested. As of September 2012, the court had not ruled on the DNA results.
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