We're into the sentencing phase of Brian Dugan, a guy who raped and murdered a 10 year old girl, Jeanine Nicarico back in the early 80s. Dugan also raped and murdered another little girl, Melissa Ackerman, and a woman named Donna Schnorr during the same period.

3 rapes, 3 murders.

Now, Judge George Bakalis is allowing testimony from a psychologist, Kent Kiehl, who will state that Dugan is a psychopath with a brain deficiency who is unable to feel remorse or sympathy. Brain scans that Kiehl conducted in 2009 have been excluded, but testimony about the scans is going to be admitted.

Why the need for the defense to get this stuff on record? Because they're trying to save their client from the death penalty.

The prosecution is saying that a brain deficiency wouldn't have kept Dugan from controlling his violent urges, and prosecutor Joe Birkett is saying that a test conducted on Dugan's brain in 2009 can't speak to Dugan's mental state in 1983.

The whole damned case has made me rethink my position on capital punishment, but seriously, wouldn't raping and murdering three people, two of them children, sort of make the question of brain function moot?

Anyone who murders another person in cold blood has a brain deficiency. The real question is, ...How do we punish a mentally deficient psychopath?