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?

Execute him 3 times.

If that is what it took to keep society safe and as long as he is alive he is a risk. He has already shown what he is capable of doing.

I support the death penalty & mental deficient or not, hang this guy & hang him high. Aren't all killers & rapists mentally deficient?

This is what prisons are for, not for smoking weed or even some of the other reasons we incarcerate so much of our population.

Prison should suck. And people who do what Dugan did should live in that sucking environment. Making license plates for free, or doing something like that for life for no money. Dealing with the memory and the reality of their deeds.

The problem is, we've made prison the answer for anyone who pisses at the line rather than those who have transgressed it grievously. So we have to go all the way to "executing him multiple times" in order to make any sense.

He should, for the rest of his life, be in solitary confinement and isolation or something equally nasty.

He should, for the rest of his life, be in solitary confinement and isolation or something equally nasty.

I agree with this, but spend those rest of his life days not only thinking about what he did, but also thinking about his execution. I want him waking up every day thinking about his death.

But I don't really have to. I agree - anyone who would do such a thing is, by definition, insane.

There are a variety of comparisons I might make, to cast such heinous acts in another light. How many children have we murdered (and rapes abetted) in the service of protecting our empire? If we choose to use cluster bombs in Iraq, does our foreknowledge of the impact of attractive little unexploded bomblets (and who will pick them up) make us equally heinous?

Context is everything, and you don't know this man's context. Nor are people inclined to look ("Skin him alive!").

We maintain our visceral reaction to such heinous crimes, and the people who commit them, in part because it eases our continued selective inattention to the factors that create such people. How was he victimized? Why has the community failed to embrace this person? What is the nature of his disability?

We should incarcerate him, because he's dangerous. But we should treat him with compassion, if we can find ways to do so without enabling him or maintaining some sort of stereotypic "bleeding heart denial" (yeah, you can, if you're willing to make the effort). We should do it not for him, but for us, because then we'll be forced to confront what made him who he is. We'll be forced to recognize the situations in our communities that are fostering the next decade's pedophillic murderers and serial killers.

But we won't. We won't, and we'll pretend we're not because we are disgusted by Brian Dugans, even though what we're really doing is turning our backs on future Jeanine Nicaricos, Melissa Ackermans and Donna Schorrs. When the next Wournos comes along, we'll adopt a stance of shocked horror, casting our baleful eye on a form of pathology for many that, if you understood it (if you let yourself), all you could say was, "Well, of course."

It's so easy to be sadistic, and to pretend that the vindication we seek doesn't ensure a constant string of victims. Let God sort them out (or Darwin).

Such a shameful price we pay, and all in the service of maintaining the denial that allows our continued neglect.

that was really, really great.

I always thought that prisons should only be there not so much to punish, but to protect society from those who would harm the people in it.

This is a shocking, terrible thing. But you are right in that it pales in comparison with what we as a nation have inflicted on the innocent people of Iraq, as if their lives weren't miserable enough. No one is being executed for that.

Well M2, 26 years ago I'd have agreed with you. Hell, 26 weeks ago I'd have agreed with you.

But it's been 26 years since Jeanine, Melissa, and Donna were raped and murdered. Dugan didn't get death for Melissa or Donna. Life without parole.

He offered to confess to Jeanine's murder in 1986 but the prosecution refused the offer, preferring instead to prosecute three innocent men, two of whom were sentenced to death. The deal-breaker for the prosecution was Dugan's insistence that he be spared the death penalty in Jeanine's murder.

So now that the case has officially become the most screwed up deal in Illinois history, they finally get around to charging Dugan for something he admitted to a quarter century ago, and he pleads guilty. Hoping to avoid the death penalty by saving the state the embarrassment of a trial, and also playing on his jury by showing "remorse." Birkett and the prosecution team don't want the jury to believe he's remorseful, so they're fighting the admission as evidence this Kiehl guy's brain scan data from 2009.

Why don't they want the jury to believe Dugan feels remorse?

They want the jury to hand down an execution.

Why, after 26 years do they so badly want to execute Brian Dugan?

Because many of them, Joe Birkett included, were the DuPage knuckleheads who declined his offer 24 years ago, and they now need to save face.

I'm beginning to think that executing Brian Dugan after this much time would have next to nothing to do with justice, and practically everything to do with politics.

And that's why I'm rethinking my position on capital punishment entirely. After watching this case closely for the duration of the damned thing, I can honestly say this is the last reaction I expected to have at its conclusion. It has become painfully clear to me that while a guy like Dugan, a guy like Gacy, deserves to stop breathing for good, we have the wrong people making those decisions. The legal/penal/justice system has become entirely too economically partial, racially discriminatory, and worst of all, political.

And....Dugan isn't any more a threat next month than he was last year. It's been 25 years and nobody in the prison population has been harmed by Dugan. I'm starting to think that the price we pay as a society when we execute a scumbag like Dugan is too high.

Well that was sort of the point. After all this time, 26 years, they're actually debating the relevance of Dugan's obvious mental deficiencies when deciding between life without parole and death. Since practically anyone with a functioning brain feels that rapist/murderers are screwed up in the head, logic would seem to dictate that every person ever convicted of rape and murder should have already been, or should be, executed. But they aren't all executed. Many get life without parole. Dugan is already serving life without parole. Pretty tough to cite a deterrent factor in executing Brian Dugan.

Hey potential rapist/murderers...you better watch out, if we catch you we'll lock you up for 26 years and then maybe we'll execute you!

System is screwed up.

Yep. That's the conclusion I'm drawing.

Life in solitary.

That's plenty.

Unreal. Almost 50 years on this rock, and I'm changing my mind about something I never thought I'd reconsider.

I don't know if I'm ready to get into a nature/nurture analysis of Brian Dugan just yet TK. Still adjusting to the acceptance that he shouldn't be whacked by the State of Illinois tomorrow morning.

If we are to learn from him, so be it. Show me the brain scan. Maybe we can save the next Jeanine by learning from Dugan's deficient brain, but I doubt it. How could such data/knowledge translate to prevention? Are we to assume that anyone with similar brain deficiencies will become pedophiles, rapists, murderers?

I'm afraid there will always be Brian Dugans walking among us, and we won't find out that he has a rotten brain until after he acts. On the other hand, and there's the reconsideration, what do we gain as a society by killing him after the fact? I guess locking him up would keep him isolated, and who knows what we can learn from him. One thing's for sure, we can't learn anything from him after he's dead.

I hate inner conflict about this kind of shit. I'm too old to change my mind about big stuff.

TenaciousK:

I don't know tis case. But I don't really have to. I agree - anyone who would do such a thing is, by definition, insane.

Then Ted Bundy could not have been executed! But sociopaths DO get the juice, for better or worse. Differentiating killings by an "I'm Napoleon at Waterloo" guy with a sword, versus a guy who well knows how whacked his conduct, and can cease it when he wishes....but doesn't.

As far I understand this thorny area anyway, TK (shoutout to FritzG or JackD), your highlighted quote begs the question. "Insanity" is a medico-legal term, not a medical term, which captures not a discrete psychological state, illness, or disorder, but an often squishy, amorphous set of circumstances under which an actor may be relieved of part or all of the culpability associated with what is otherwise a full-fledged criminal act. "Insanity" hence is more at a description of symptoms post hoc, or a policy-decision concerning valid/invalid excuses, than a diagnosis which would presumably obtain ab initio.

In Dugan's case, perhaps they are aiming at his "capacity" to be executed now more than a reference to his mental state at the time of the acts he's convicted of? Or if not that, maybe his sociopathy as a sufficient mitigator to avoid the death penalty, if not full and proper personal responsibility for his crimes.

Maybe Alexa-Blue could weigh in here too, from the medical side of things. We had an unfinished on-topic exchange the other day....

You're missing my point. Any debate we have about nature and nurture actually serves to further detract from my point (though we could have one of those, if you wanted to).

I'm just trying to encourage you to examine your desire for vindication/justice in this case – from whence it comes, and at what cost you (and in the collective sense, we) maintain it. More important, what you/we might reap from abandoning it.

The death penalty is not only unhelpful, in many cases similar to the one you describe, it's counterproductive (increases the likelihood that a future victim will be murdered, rather than “merely” sexually assaulted).

One of the most rudimentary lessons behaviorism can teach us is that you cannot teach any complex behavior by relying solely on punishment – all you can teach is avoidance. On the one hand, that might be sufficient to teach the dog to refrain from peeing on your carpet (actually, alone, it's not), but on the other hand, what you might actually be teaching is not to avoid the behavior, but to avoid getting caught. Behavior shaping (incremental reinforcement) is a much more powerful tool – it involves the acquisition of something desired, rather than the avoidance of something painful. For this particular problem (obviously), it is most desirable to apply such tools preemptively.

But when we view people with such inclinations as disgusting/monstrous/worthy of a long, slow, death by public torture (or in the case of mere pedophiles, humiliation), then when we recognize such inclinations in nascent perpetrators, we will respond to what we perceive in a similar vein. And as we all collude in such a strategy together, we can pretend the righteous satisfaction of discouraging heinous acts, though in reality, we're merely encouraging predatory people to become increasingly sophisticated in the clandestine manner of their predatory pursuits. (Jesus, hasn't anyone ever wondered why there are so many pedophillic priests?)

If I were a better writer, I think I'd construct a parable about the nature of identity. I think I'd write it from the perspective of an oyster who is struggling to create not a perfect pearl, but one that will be deemed acceptable enough to earn him entrance into the community of oysters (or maintain membership in the community in which he already belongs). Perhaps I'd write about various oysters, and how it is they cope with the challenges of pearl formation [particularly the strategies and attendant consequences for coping with a shameful/disgusting fissure or fissures (perhaps both vertical and horizontal) in the pearl slowly accreting in their mouth].

[Zeusboy could probably write it in his sleep.]

Invoking the word "insane" activates an entirely different set of associations and expectations than invoking the word "criminal" (or somesuch).

What do you anticipate would happen if we abandoned the idea of "criminal" in its entirety, in favor of broadening the definition of "insane"? Would the bleeding hearts of the world take to the streets, begging forgiveness for Wilie Pickton and Charles Manson? And if they did, what form do you anticipate their forgiveness would take?

[Anticipating your response, I've competing images of a girl putting a flower into the barrel Willie Pickton's dildo-gun, and Clockwork Orange.]

This thread is one more example of why I am against the death penalty.

Unfortunately, as 10K suggests, a life sentence in solitary confinement is also immoral. (OK, that's my take, not necessarily 10K's.) If a criminal is not crazy before being put in solitary confinement, he will be after five or ten years of a SuperMax isolation cell. Some commit suicide.

And I understand that any leftover Guantanamo "enemy combatants" that are put in a US pen will also end up in life-long solitary confinement.

So much for the "progress" of civilization.