This episode appears to be based on the 1988/1994 Paul Cox case. On New Year's Eve 1988, Cox broke in to his former home and murdered the current homeowners, the Chervus, while in a drunken rage as they slept. He believed them to be his own parents, with whom he did not get along. He apparently forgot about what he did until he began having vivid dreams about the murders. Four years later, he confessed to the double homicide during an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting.
McCoy refers to the Menendez case in California. He is talking about the real life case of Erik and Lyle Menendez who murdered their parents on August 20, 1989 with shotguns they had bought recently. After killing their parents the brothers went to the movies to try and give themselves an alibi, which worked for awhile, it took police over a year to gather enough evidence to arrest them. Their trial received world wide media attention and was televised, it was also unusual in that the brothers were tried at the same time but there were two juries, one for each brother. They used an affirmative defense stating that they killed their parents in self defense believing that their parents were going to murder them. They introduced evidence and witness testimony that showed that they were both physically and sexually abused by both parents their whole life and that they were going to tell people that they had been abused and alleged that their father said he would kill them if they did. The trial ended with both juries deadlocking. Both juries were split down the middle with part of Erik's jury voting to convict on first degree murder and the remainder voting to convict on first degree manslaughter. Lyle's jury all voted to acquit on first and second degree murder and half of them voted to acquit him on all charges and the other half voted to convict him on first degree manslaughter. The judge refused to accept their deadlock at first and kept sending them back to deliberate, after nine weeks the judge finally accepted the deadlock and declared a mistrial. During the second trial both brothers had the same jury and this time around the judge refused to allow the defense to present the evidence about the brothers killing their parents due to the life-long physical and sexual abuse they had suffered at the hands of their parents. He allowed only the brothers to testify about the abuse, he did not allow the other dozen or so witnesses to the abuse testify and he excluded the physical evidence. He also instructed the jury that they were not allowed to consider lesser charges such as second degree murder and first degree manslaughter, that their choice was to either convict the brothers of first degree murder or to acquit. The jury eventually found both brothers guilty and they were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. After the trial the jury said that if they had been allowed to hear the defense's evidence about the abuse the brothers had suffered at the hands of their parents that most of them would have considered voting to acquit but that all of them would have at least voted to convict on first degree manslaughter instead of first degree murder. The jurors stated that they felt the brothers did not deserve to be convicted of first degree murder but at the same time they felt they didn't deserve to walk either so they only convicted on first degree murder because they had no other choice. The judge's conduct has also been called into question for not allowing the defense to present their whole case and for not allowing the jury to consider manslaughter. The verdict was upheld on appeal though and as of March, 2018 the brothers have no appeals remaining, are still incarcerated and have not seen each other since their conviction on July 2, 1996.
At the time of this episode's filming testimony based on repressed memories recovered under hypnosis were accepted as evidence in a court of law and a lot of people were convicted based on this type of evidence, most of the convictions were for sex crimes. However a multitude of studies since then have shown that using hypnosis to recover repressed memories, especially memories repressed because of a traumatic experience, is an extremely unreliable process. The main flaw found was in the way the questions were asked to the person under hypnosis, a person under hypnosis is in an extremely suggestible state so if the questions had too much detail they suggested the answer. An example being if a psychologist is trying to help a woman recover repressed memories of a childhood sexual assault and while the subject is hypnotized the psychologist asks "when you were 12 years old did your father grope your breasts". Since the subject is in a suggestible state the question would very likely cause the subject to form an image in her mind of herself as a young girl and her father putting his hands on her breasts, then when she is brought out of hypnosis this image she imagined is stored in the part of her brain where long term memories are stored and she forms what is called a false memory, although to her it seems as if the memory is real. After the findings of these studies were made public a number of people that were convicted based on recovered memory testimony appealed their convictions. Since most of these people were convicted at a time when DNA testing was still in the early stages the evidence in their cases was retested using modern methods that could get DNA from samples that were previously too small to test. In the vast majority of these cases the DNA tests exonerated the defendants and as a result the law was changed and testimony based on recovered memories is no longer accepted evidence in a court of law.
The song Steven is singing while under hypnosis was previously sung by the main character in the episode Discord (1993) (S04E03).
The scene where Marge is conferring with the judge was shot in CCNY's Shepherd Hall. A glimpse of the mural "The Great Teachers" (1930) can be seen in the background.