He understands its significance. The vest, however, won’t protect him from a head shot. There could be one or more snipers waiting for him outside.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility. People in this city are crazy.

After he slips on the vest, he is handcuffed and led through a phalanx of armed cops. The faces watching him are not friendly.

The police, he knows, are openly calling him a wacko in the press. Others are quoted as saying he is a “loner” who “had a screw loose.”

They put a jacket over his head and lead him outside, into a riot of howls, rage, and raised voices that drill into his ears. The cops escorting him dig their fingers deeper into his arms. Eyes on the ground, he sways back and forth as police around him push forward, through the crush of media. Flashbulbs go off like machine-gun fire. TV cameras, he’s sure, are everywhere.

People scream “killer” and “monster” and “loser.”

Someone yells, “I hope you rot in hell!”

Another: “I’m going to kill you, Chapman!”

Closer is another set of voices that belong to reporters shouting questions they hope he’ll answer so that they, too, can get the inside scoop and become famous.

Everyone here is shouting his name.

Everyone on the planet now knows who he is. Like John Lennon and Jesus Christ, he has done what few people in this world are able to do.

He has left his mark. He will be remembered. Always and forever. Eternal.

He smiles underneath the jacket.

He is treated to the same grand reception at the courthouse. Inside, he is ushered into a soundproof pen to meet his court-appointed lawyer.

His name is Herbert Adlerberg. He has represented highly unpopular defendants in high-profile cases before, including members of the Black Liberation Army, who were accused of terrorism and murdering police officers in the early 1970s, and the Harlem Six, a group of youths charged in a race-fueled double murder in 1964.

The courtroom is absolutely packed. Every single person is looking at him. Pens are scribbling furiously across notepads. Blinking back tears of joy, he takes a seat next to his lawyer.

Adlerberg asks to have him committed to a mental hospital. Assistant district attorney Kim Hogrefe asks that he be held without bail and sent to Rikers Island.

“He committed a deliberate, premeditated execution of John Lennon,” Hogrefe tells the court, “and acted in a cool, calm, and calculated manner in killing Mr. Lennon by shooting him several times with a .38-caliber pistol.”

Adlerberg tells Judge Martin Rettinger that he, Mark David Chapman, twice tried to kill himself.

The judge consents to Adlerberg’s request. Mark is sent to Bellevue Hospital for psychological examination.

The psychiatrist at the hospital, Dr. Naomi Goldstein, seems pleasant enough.

They talk. A lot.