The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America’s Courtroom

Journalist Davis (Defending the Damned) provides an accessible look at how criminals’ brain damage has been cited by their defense attorneys, a relatively new intersection of science and law that, in theory, could provide answers to a fundamental question: Do people have free will and thus bear culpability for their crimes, or is biology destiny? Davis centers his study on a New York City homicide from 1991. Herbert Weinstein, a retired advertising salesman who was regarded by friends and family as completely non-violent, strangled his wife, Barbara, before throwing her out the window of their 12th-floor Upper East Side apartment. Weinstein confessed almost instantly to the murder. Given that the killing was so out of character, his attorney, Diarmuid White, pursued a psychiatric defense, a tactic bolstered by the results of an MRI scan that revealed that Weinstein had an “orange-sized growth” on his left frontal lobe. Davis walks the reader carefully through the scientific and legal debates over whether that cyst alone caused Barbara Weinstein’s death. He also effectively examines related issues, such as violence committed by veterans suffering from PTSD, and by football players afflicted with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. His comprehensive research amply supports his conclusion that brain damage alters behavior but “neuroscience alone cannot absolve someone of committing murder—or any crime—or pinpoint the cause of a single act.” (Feb.)