In my last post, I discussed how Dr. Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist, is using fMRI technology to detect brain abnormalities in people with psychopathy. His participants are prison inmates who score high on the PCL-R, a psychodiagnostic measure used to assess psychopathy. Once he determines that the participant is, in fact, a psychopath based on their PCL-R score, he takes scans of their brains using an fMRI to determine if there are brain differences between psychopathic participants and normal controls. He has found defects in the paralimbic system that he believes relate to psychopathy.
Interestingly, Dr. Kiehl’s research is being used by perpetrators to avoid prison or to reduce sentencing. One such case has plagued the Chicago area for over two decades. Brian Dugan, a 52-year-old man with a 13-year crime spree, including murders, rapes, arson, and burglaries, spanning the 1970s and 80s finally went to trial for his crimes in late 2009. For those interested in death penalty laws, this case has a lot of history, and contributed to the moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois due to the wrongful conviction of three men for one of the murders (Jeanine Nicarico) that Dugan committed.
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Kenneth
10:49 am on
March 24th, 2010I think that we need to look at this from a different point of view, in fact continue presence of abnormalities related to psychopathy could be used as evidence to prevent the release of prisoners or the effectiveness of treatment. Again, we need to bring our law of the land away from punishment and towards a way of benefiting the society while keeping them safe.
Archangel
11:06 am on
March 24th, 2010Public safety is of utmost importance which ever direction the debate goes. Adding to their victim list is not a preferable option.
Sigh…undoubtedly you’ll find abnormalities if you scan any mass murderer’s brain. I’m sure Hitler had the brain of a psychopath. But how does that excuse their actions? They KNOW the difference between RIGHT and WRONG, it just doesn’t BOTHER them when they do the wrong thing. And to think you can someday treat these people with meds…does Dr. Kiehl seriously think they can come up with a med that provides empathy to someone who otherwise has none of it?
I have some more to say on my blog:
http://psychiatryfun.blogspot.com/2010/03/you-did-what-with-psychopath.html
Z. Murphy
3:19 pm on
March 29th, 2010One other note on this. There was another article written about the hearing that indicated that the prosecution’s psychiatrist testified that the brain scan Kiehl did on Dugan in Sept 2009 could not actually represent what Dugan’s mind was like back in 1983 when he committed the murder.
So I can’t say that the jury totally disregarded Kiehl’s ideas. I think it would be difficult to verify that Dugan’s brain operated exactly the same over twenty five years ago. The prosecution could make the claim that Dugan’s brain issues have developed since that period.
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