A Criminal Mind
October 7, 2015 3:34 AM Subscribe
From a bit of googling it doesn't look like the UK has any further framework within the judicial system, there was a study done in January looking at crime rates among FTD patients, resulting in advice to the courts but not action as yet.
posted by ellieBOA at 5:17 AM on October 7, 2015
posted by ellieBOA at 5:17 AM on October 7, 2015
For me, the most baffling thing about the story wasn't Dreyer's behavior, but the appeals system which vacated the original sentence... then gave the case back to the original judge, who, surprise, came to the exact same decision. What the hell?
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:19 AM on October 7, 2015
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:19 AM on October 7, 2015
Saw the frontotemporal dementia diagnosis coming from a mile away. It's super scary because it doesn't look like dementia. It's the judgment that goes, and it's very hard to convince anyone else that something has gone seriously wrong with them. Usually the family can't even come in with a guardianship until it's far too late. Do you wonder why so many older people, who have otherwise been good decision makers, end up getting caught up in stupid obvious investment scams and frauds? Some of that is due to undiagnosed cases of frontotemporal dementia.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:49 AM on October 7, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 5:49 AM on October 7, 2015 [10 favorites]
Any time our legal system interacts with mental health or mental illness, it's usually a tragicomic trainwreck all around with only the most tenuous connection to anything resembling what we know about how brains work. This case is no different in that respect.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:56 AM on October 7, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 5:56 AM on October 7, 2015 [5 favorites]
then gave the case back to the original judge, who, surprise, came to the exact same decision. What the hell?
Judges don't stop being over-evolved monkeys like the rest of us when they get put on the bench. The ninth circuit judges raised hell because one of their own got removed, and that meant they could be removed, so they basically threw a shit fit. From the sound of it, the second decision was identical to the first one, except it didn't remove the judge. It was a purely political slapdown that had nothing to do with Dreyer and everything to do with judges' grip on their power.
posted by Naberius at 6:10 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
Judges don't stop being over-evolved monkeys like the rest of us when they get put on the bench. The ninth circuit judges raised hell because one of their own got removed, and that meant they could be removed, so they basically threw a shit fit. From the sound of it, the second decision was identical to the first one, except it didn't remove the judge. It was a purely political slapdown that had nothing to do with Dreyer and everything to do with judges' grip on their power.
posted by Naberius at 6:10 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
Interesting. How is the U.S. judicial system reckoning with this?
Heavily-armed and trigger-happy?
posted by Thorzdad at 6:41 AM on October 7, 2015
Heavily-armed and trigger-happy?
posted by Thorzdad at 6:41 AM on October 7, 2015
Dope essay. Thanks for posting, ellieBOA. Neurological degeneration is something that "operates" out of range of the individual's free will, whereas so many criminal legal proceedings seem to be concerned with proving or disproving that someone's criminal behaviors were chosen- the presence of active will being a defining factor in criminality itself. "Insanity," on the other hand (esp. an insanity of biological origin, like dementia) is not chosen. It happens. A punishment-based legal system therefore is not at all suitable for dealing with it. The law is the law is the law, after all, but not all law-breakers are created equally. Nevertheless, the legal system proceeds like a factory, manufacturing "the innocent" and "the guilty" like assembly line widgets. It can't not. When it works, it works. But when it fails...oh man, does it fail like a boss.
posted by Bob Regular at 7:12 AM on October 7, 2015
posted by Bob Regular at 7:12 AM on October 7, 2015
He sounds like a successful sociopath right from the start to me. Like he could've been a character study in "The Sociopath Next Door".
posted by clawsoon at 7:12 AM on October 7, 2015
posted by clawsoon at 7:12 AM on October 7, 2015
A problem with this story is that it doesn't explain the distinction in American law between competency (which was at issue here) and insanity.
Competency is all about the context of the criminal proceedings -- is the defendant capable of understanding what's happening in their trial and, especially, whether they understand what it would mean to plead either guilty or not guilty. Competency is determined by the judge before the trial begins. If someone is found incompetent, there can be no trial at all. Insanity is all about someone's moral capacity with regard to the crime for which they stand accused. It's the thing we hear about in movies and television about being able to understand right from wrong. And those standards for determining insanity vary around the US. Furthermore, that's a determination that in most or all US jurisdictions a jury makes.
What was at issue in this case was competency, not insanity.
It seems obvious to me that if anything would impair someone's capacity for moral judgment such that we wouldn't find them criminally culpable, it would be FTD. If it were up to me, all jurisdictions would have legal insanity definitions that include FTD and juries would find defendants not guilty on that basis (and they'd be hospitalized or otherwise carefully supervised). Indeed, I'd want prosecutors to not prosecute such crimes in the first place but work with other authorities to move such patients into medical supervision.
But that's not what happened in this case. In this case the prosecutors chose to prosecute and Dryer and his lawyers chose to plead guilty. The article completely glosses over this and doesn't explain why they pled guilty and didn't consider an insanity defense. And so the issue here was competency. But it's not clear at all to me that the narrow definition of competency in this context doesn't include Dryer. It seems to me that he's competent in this context. True, FTD might interfere with his ability to decide how to plead -- his judgment and lack of impulse control might mean that he'd not be able to choose what's best for himself in the longer term. And it sounds like this was the sort of argument that his second set of lawyers were making. Even so, that's a far more ambiguous matter than is that of his larger impairment with regard to his criminal actions.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:30 AM on October 7, 2015 [5 favorites]
Competency is all about the context of the criminal proceedings -- is the defendant capable of understanding what's happening in their trial and, especially, whether they understand what it would mean to plead either guilty or not guilty. Competency is determined by the judge before the trial begins. If someone is found incompetent, there can be no trial at all. Insanity is all about someone's moral capacity with regard to the crime for which they stand accused. It's the thing we hear about in movies and television about being able to understand right from wrong. And those standards for determining insanity vary around the US. Furthermore, that's a determination that in most or all US jurisdictions a jury makes.
What was at issue in this case was competency, not insanity.
It seems obvious to me that if anything would impair someone's capacity for moral judgment such that we wouldn't find them criminally culpable, it would be FTD. If it were up to me, all jurisdictions would have legal insanity definitions that include FTD and juries would find defendants not guilty on that basis (and they'd be hospitalized or otherwise carefully supervised). Indeed, I'd want prosecutors to not prosecute such crimes in the first place but work with other authorities to move such patients into medical supervision.
But that's not what happened in this case. In this case the prosecutors chose to prosecute and Dryer and his lawyers chose to plead guilty. The article completely glosses over this and doesn't explain why they pled guilty and didn't consider an insanity defense. And so the issue here was competency. But it's not clear at all to me that the narrow definition of competency in this context doesn't include Dryer. It seems to me that he's competent in this context. True, FTD might interfere with his ability to decide how to plead -- his judgment and lack of impulse control might mean that he'd not be able to choose what's best for himself in the longer term. And it sounds like this was the sort of argument that his second set of lawyers were making. Even so, that's a far more ambiguous matter than is that of his larger impairment with regard to his criminal actions.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:30 AM on October 7, 2015 [5 favorites]
The main story aside, this anecdote was really striking for me:
posted by Wretch729 at 7:35 AM on October 7, 2015 [12 favorites]
"In March, for example, researchers from the University of Denver found that 96 percent of all inmates screened at the Downtown Detention Center in Colorado had brain trauma, mostly from blunt-force injuries to the head — much higher than the estimated 6 to 8.5 percent of the general population."Is that staggering disparity common? Has anyone done broader research on this? I know someone who did a lot of TBI research so I am vaguely aware of this stuff but I hadn't seen such shocking numbers before. This seems potentially like a hidden epidemic. I mean people get all excited about the leaded gasoline crime theories but this is crazy.
posted by Wretch729 at 7:35 AM on October 7, 2015 [12 favorites]
Is that staggering disparity common? Has anyone done broader research on this? I know someone who did a lot of TBI research so I am vaguely aware of this stuff but I hadn't seen such shocking numbers before. This seems potentially like a hidden epidemic. I mean people get all excited about the leaded gasoline crime theories but this is crazy.
I've always thought that this was the best explanation for O.J. Simpson's dramatic change in behavior. Prior to the murder accusation, he was by all accounts an upstanding citizen, spokesman, commentator, and actor.
Imagine if brain screening was a default on conviction (or even felony arrest), and proper medical treatment and follow-up was a condition of parole.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:14 AM on October 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
I've always thought that this was the best explanation for O.J. Simpson's dramatic change in behavior. Prior to the murder accusation, he was by all accounts an upstanding citizen, spokesman, commentator, and actor.
Imagine if brain screening was a default on conviction (or even felony arrest), and proper medical treatment and follow-up was a condition of parole.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:14 AM on October 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
Weird - I totally remember this guy's commercials because we got tons of Detroit channels in southwestern Ontario where I grew up.
Oliver Sacks wrote about a similar situation (involving Klüver-Bucy syndrome rather than frontotemporal dementia) in one of his final essays: Urge.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:27 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Oliver Sacks wrote about a similar situation (involving Klüver-Bucy syndrome rather than frontotemporal dementia) in one of his final essays: Urge.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:27 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
This made me think of this Atlantic article from a few years ago: The Brain on Trial. It looks at what we know about how the brain works and how this can/should affect the way we approach the criminal justice system. Frontotemporal dementia is one of the conditions discussed in the article.
There's definitely something unnerving once you realize how parts of your personality that you would consider to be so intrinsic (like a sense of right and wrong) can be completely subverted. One of the cases mentioned in the article I linked was a man who at the age of 40 developed a sudden obsession with child pornography, among other things. Eventually, it was discovered that he had a brain tumor, and once the tumor was removed, the interest in child pornography disappeared.
I don't think there are any easy answers, but this is really tragic, and I feel so terrible for everyone involved, especially the family.
posted by litera scripta manet at 11:49 AM on October 7, 2015 [3 favorites]
There's definitely something unnerving once you realize how parts of your personality that you would consider to be so intrinsic (like a sense of right and wrong) can be completely subverted. One of the cases mentioned in the article I linked was a man who at the age of 40 developed a sudden obsession with child pornography, among other things. Eventually, it was discovered that he had a brain tumor, and once the tumor was removed, the interest in child pornography disappeared.
I don't think there are any easy answers, but this is really tragic, and I feel so terrible for everyone involved, especially the family.
posted by litera scripta manet at 11:49 AM on October 7, 2015 [3 favorites]
... then gave the case back to the original judge, who, surprise, came to the exact same decision. What the hell?
Frontotemporal dementia all around???
My usual flip snark but there's a lot of older judges (and doctors) and seeming no reliable diagnostic method. In an increasingly aging society, of which I certainly intend to personally stretch the tail of the distribution, it seems like an area that deserves more funding. Or at least a foundation that, er, someone, could chair and use FTD as a defense if the missallocations are discovered... Erk is rampant snark a symptom???
posted by sammyo at 3:48 PM on October 7, 2015
Frontotemporal dementia all around???
My usual flip snark but there's a lot of older judges (and doctors) and seeming no reliable diagnostic method. In an increasingly aging society, of which I certainly intend to personally stretch the tail of the distribution, it seems like an area that deserves more funding. Or at least a foundation that, er, someone, could chair and use FTD as a defense if the missallocations are discovered... Erk is rampant snark a symptom???
posted by sammyo at 3:48 PM on October 7, 2015
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Interesting. How is the U.S. judicial system reckoning with this? Other countries? Thanks for the article, ellieBOA.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:09 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]