From The Wall Street Journal:
In 1991 a retired advertising salesman named Herbert Weinstein strangled his wife and threw her out the window of the twelfth floor apartment they shared on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Despite the killer’s confession, this seemingly straightforward case became clouded with confusion after it was discovered that Weinstein had a cyst “the size of an orange” pressing on his brain. Suddenly, neurologists and brain scans became as important to Weinstein’s fate as lawyers and physical evidence. At a pretrial hearing, a judge for the first time granted permission for a jury to see the results of a PET scan. It would not be the last.
Kevin Davis places Weinstein’s fascinating story at the center of “The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America’s Courtrooms.”
. . . .
What was novel in the Weinstein case has become commonplace. Mr. Davis reports that, “in more than 250 opinions issued in 2012, defendants argued that their ‘brains made them do it,’ more than double the number five years earlier.” The trend shows no signs of abating. Where once lawyers pointed to a broken home, many now point to a “broken brain,” whether caused by childhood abuse, an IED in Iraq or a cyst like Weinstein’s. The brain of the accused has become a second crime scene, the perpetrator a victim of traumatic brain injury, structural anomalies or lesions responsible for low-glucose metabolism in an area vital for decision-making.
. . . .
To “neuroskeptics,” brain damage, however visible on a scan, offers no proof that a much-concussed football player is not responsible for shooting his wife even if he is damaged in an area implicated in moral reasoning. After all, he might have been drawn to a violent sport by a violent nature long before his first collision. As Helen Mayberg, a professor at Emory University School of Medicine, tells Mr. Davis: “Neuroscience is not objective. Two people can analyze the same data differently.” This is a legal revolution based on a subjective foundation.
. . . .
Mr. Damasio ultimately found that while Weinstein appeared to know right from wrong, pressure from the tumor deprived him of the ability to act in accordance with that knowledge. In the scientist’s words: “Confronted with an unusual provocation he was unable to select the most appropriate response option.”
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire)
If your mind made you do it, the devil would be unemployed and Hell would be vacant?
If you kill people because of a tumor, you ought to be put away where you don’t do it again, no matter what caused it, because you aren’t safe to be around other people. The brain tumor may remove premeditation, or intent, or reasoning power, but it doesn’t excuse conduct or make the sufferer guiltless.
Even if we want to call them guiltless they would need to be kept apart from people who might cause them to have to react on a moral decision. They are walking death no matter how we want to quantify their personal responsibility.
Totally agree, except when they can be cured and the tumor removed. While monitoring for recurrence should be absolutely required, there are a good many of those that do this due to a completely removable benign mass that tends to grow on the part of the brain responsible for impulse control. It’s weird, but there it is.
In those cases, it would be like saying a person who caused a traffic accident by sleepwalking should be locked up for murder if someone dies or never permitted to sleep again. In the cases of curable tumors, there should be some compassion.
I was going to mention Whitman, because in his case, he actually left a great deal of writing behind. As his tumor grew (though he didn’t know he had one), he found that he had dark thoughts he’d never had before, his personality changed, and he felt like he was losing control. He also started taking amphetamines because he said they helped with the pain (which is likely, giving that what he was taking probably did take a small bit of pressure off via both dehydration and anti-inflammatory response).
The brain defense will get used by those that shouldn’t use it, but it is well established medical fact that some kinds of brain lesions completely change personality, degrade moral reasoning and all sorts of jazz.
Mostly, I feel really bad for the people who do bad things that they honestly and sincerely can’t help doing. What a horrible thing.
Agreed. I still remember learning of Phineas Gage in psych class. IIRC, his tragedy is the reason we know that the brain plays a key role in our characters and personalities. He worked on the railroad back in the 19th century. In an accident a tamping rod went through his face and out of his head. He went from being an even-tempered nice guy to a wild and impulsive brawler. I always thought the Smithsonian had his skull and tamping rod on display, but according to their website it’s in a museum at Harvard.
In more recent times, I once had a case where a woman explained her divorce from her husband. They were happily married for about 20 years until he injured his head in a car accident. He went from being a nice man to violent enough that she no longer felt safe around him. Poor couple.
For what it’s worth, I’m reasonable certain that the Mr. Damasio mentioned in the quoted article is Antonio Damasio, half of a husband and wife team that analyzed the skull of Phineas Gage and determined that the area that had been damaged in his brain was key to self-control. (I’m not certain because the WSJ article is behind a firewall.)
Ah, I just Googled Damasio, and I think you’re right. Thanks for the tip.
I’m glad more research is being done regarding these types of injuries. It’s unsettling how much of our own nature is dependent on factors outside of our control.
In Austin, 01 August 1966, Charles Whitman killed his mother and wife. He then went to the top of the University of Texas Tower and fired on the people on the quad below with a rifle. Before he was stopped (shot dead), he killed fourteen and wounded thirty-one.
When his body was autopsied, he was found to have a brain tumor.
A personal note: When I was hunting for office space in Austin, I looked at a place in one building. When I said goodbye to the owner’s agent, I stopped by another attorney’s office on the ground floor to ask his opinion of the building management. He told me that this was the building Whitman’s mother was in when he killed her and suggested that I could use the information to negotiate a better rent.
I found other office space.