Thank you all for joining us this evening im maria one of the event coordinators here at the bookstore and i have the pleasure of introducing kevin this evening. A quick reminder to silence your cell phone if you havent yet and encouragement to check out our kartd of events at the bookstore and we have pam net of our march and april events on table bit popcorn. We have a wonderfully full calendar and authors coming up including this evening kevin davis is awardwinning journalist and former Crime Reporter work appeared in u. S. Today and the reader and other publication author of the wrong man, defending the dam ited, and most recently the brain defense murder in manhattan, and dawn of neuroscience in Americas Courtroom which has been praised in countless glowing reviews. Wall street journal hailed as excellent and review called it thoroughly researched clearly presented and engaged and explore the. It is a story of connections, between science and law between psychology and justice. Between the gray matter of our brain and the influence for good or for ail, but it can yield on world around us. Around us it is a story of the equally thought connections between us of what we owe and offer a each other within systems offered to keep us safe. It is a story of where they it which is to say we feel and where we can improve. From the 19th century for who claim to have acknowledged to have organ of destructiveness to scientist struggling to keep up with expansion of their discoveries. Kevin davis track ared fascinating and vital effort to understand our minds. Which is to say ourselves. In the course of this journey grapples with massive questions of free will, selfdetermination, but never loses sight of the fact that these about a subtract concepts manifest in very real ways in lives of very real people and all people are capable of terrible violence, yes. But also tremendous empathy, incredible perseverance and share brilliance from the heart of this remarkable account. Welcome me in authoring kevin davis to the bookstore. [applause] thank you, thank you for that beautiful introduction. I was really terrific. Thank you for hosting the so excited to see so many people here who are interestedded in the brain. Ive spent probably the last four, five years doing a lot of thinking about our brains. Ive been immersed in brains more than i ever imagined i would and ive been thinking about how they work, how they now function, how they surprise us and amaze us as well pep and im thinking how this mound of tissue filled with billions and billions of neurons derls who we are what we think, how we think, and whether we really have free will or not. And so ive been looking at how brains influence or behavior and how they control or how they fail to control our impulses. Ive woundered why can some stop themselves from doing they know it wrong and why others are unable to stop ourselves from doing something that we know is wrong it happen it is in our everyday lives all of the time we make these decisions about whether we can control our impulses or not. So heres what i mean, have you ever really gotten really, really mad at somebody . Your spouse, your significant other, your children the person who cuts you off in traffic. [laughter] and then if i could just kill that person. Right but most of us, of course, we dont because we know how to put the brakes on our behavior. No matter how angry we get with somebody we most of us i dont know if there are any convicted felons or murderers in the room if you are excuse me. But we control our thoughts we dont translate our homicidal thoughts into actions. So im going to tell you about a story named Herbert Weinstein and a he Bert Weinstein was a friendly mild mannered advertising salesman in new york city. He lived on Upper East Side with a second wife her name was barbra. And his first wife had died of a of cancer and he had actually nursed her during her dying days and was a very loving husband. He let barbra about a year or so after his first wife died. Barbara was divorced. And a the couple met through a mutual friend in new york, and they fell in love pretty quickly and they were the envy of their peers. They loved new york. They loved walking up and down the street going to restaurants. Going to shows doing all sorts of thingings together. Everybody described them as really a tight and loving couple they would hold hands wag down the street. And Herbert Weinstein known as a real gentlemen he was a lover of books a lifelong student selfimprovement and prided himself on his calm demeanor. He was also pretty cool under pressure. People really noted that about him but sometimes weinstein and barb ra fought as couples do from time to time. One night they get into an argument, and theyre talking about their children. And weinstein had had called barbaras daughter a spoiled brat and she called his son making fun of his weight and job and weinstein decided hes not going to talk anymore but barbara kept talking and this infuriated her everybody more while weinstein sat there and listened. So during the heat of the argument, she swiped at his face and slashed him under the eye. Weinstein calm until that moment lost it. He went for his wifes throat and he put his hands around her throat and he squeezed he squeezed, and he squeezed until she fell down to the ground apparently dead unconscience. Wine spine panicked. He dragged his wife over to the bedroom. Opened the window, they lived 12th on the 12th floor. And he picked her up and hurled her out the window. His idea was he thought he would make it look like a suicide. But the cops figured out pretty quickly weinstein fold under questioning and he admitted what he had done he said i lost it. I just simply lost it. So weinstein was a man ever means so he was able to hire a very good lawyer. On the Upper East Side of manhattan. And after his lawyer had spoken to weinstein he thought this just really seems so out of character. This whole case is so odd. He said im going to send qien sign for some psychological testing a psych workup. Just to see if there might be something going on. So doctors found nothing wrong on the surface with weinstein. He was a little detached it was sort of odd that he wasnt really reacting to this horrible trauma that had just occurred so about three months after his arrest, his lawyer decided to go for an mri to see if there anything going on in hs brain and they take an image what appears on screen was stunning in the next room they had seen a big black hole or which repghted represented a cyst size of an orange growing over o his left frontal lobe in the lawyer said ive got my defense. So thus this was born this idea of the brain defense. So the brain defense is the the term that i use throughout the book to describe a phenomenon, a growing phenomenon in the legal system in which lawyers are using neuroscience to explain, defend criminal bhair and theyre bringing neuroscience to diminish a defendants responsibility an theyre saying that brain dysfunction whether it is caused by drug abuse alcohol abuse, tumor, genetic anomaly, cancer should be considered in determining whether people fully are responsible for their crimes and how it should affect the severity of their sentences. And this is not just some o occasional thing. This is happening now four to 500 times year and thats just doubled in which lawyers have brought brain defenses into the criminal court. In just this morning there was a story in the New York Times ab teenager in israel who was arrested on on for making antisemitic threats a bomb threat to Community Centers and synagogues and sure enough, his lawyer said that he has a brain tumor so this is something folks that were going to to see probably a lot more of. And a it has far reaching comble cases just beyond this. I write about it in the book how lawyers have been suggestings that concussions are are now partly to blame for violent behavior by Football Players off the field. Other lawyers now are say suggestings traumatic brain injury along with ptsd, are factors that are influencing the violent behavior of some veterans. Who have returned from combat. So were seeing more that have. And so as a result, judges and juries are being asked to ponder very, very complex questions in science is how it relates to human behavior. Being asked to ponder whether we have free will or o not whether we control our brains or whether our brains control us. So its pretty deep stuff and heart of the brain defense in my book that uses qien sign case as an entry point to go into a world where science, morality, and the law intertwine in ways that we may have never thought about before. So i was a Crime Reporter back in the mid80s to 90s and south florida this was the time when show miami wife was very popular, and south florida was like the wild west out there. There was crime are it was out of control. We were having drugs and violent drug lords coming from central and south africa. Homicides were up, and i had seen as a reporter all of the horrible things that people can do to each other. And when i was working on my last book, defending the dammed which was about public defenders i saw how lawyers work really lard to humanize people who have done very inhumane things to each other and they often did this by claiming that their clients were damaged in some way. Because of childhood, poverty, drug or alcohol abuse. These were all factors that sometimes brought some compassion and understanding to their clients not necessarily exonerating them or completely but qowld lead sometimes people to get treatment instead of inconsiders ration or instead of the Death Penalty. So this idea that law might consider a persons mental state in determines of responsibility goes back to ancient times. The greeks which had created a court system they wanted a system that would turn peoples thirst for vengeance into something more understanding more civilized. Weem were held accountable for what they did but also included a humanistic side where the greeks thought it was important to understand the mind of the offender. They thought they recognized that those people who was suffered from diseases of the mind and a should not be held responsible to the degree of their mentally healthy count parts and mercy because they lack the ability to make voluntary choices. In making voluntary choices really is at the heart of criminal law. Neuroscience to suggest the clients dont necessarily have a guilty mind or free will, that is where things get complicated. Neuroscience, tells us anything we do whether it is to commit a crime or feed ourselves or anything we do is triggered by a series of chemical and electrical interactions, neuroscience shows where it is occurring, so we can see in realtime pet scans. They can monitor which parts of the brain are engaged when we are doing different activities people perform under the scanner, whether people are frightened or angry, there have been brain scans and studies that show where those interactions occur and neuroscience can show if we have brain damage, areas around the damage are functioning at capacity or properly but what neuroscience cant do is prove that somebody committed a crime at a specific time because their brain made them do it. People dont have brain scanners attached to their heads when they commit crimes anyway. What we are seeing generally in brain scans are scans that may take months or years after the crime occurred. That is not what it is for. It doesnt show cause and effect. The other thing to consider is not all people with brain damage become criminals. Not all people who come back from combat become violent. Not all Football Players are violent. Things get very complicated in trying to make these linkages. The forces that make a person commit a crime come from many different factors, nature and nurture. Every thought, every decision, everything we do daytoday is a culmination of wife experiences and biology. As i was delving into the brain looking into Brain Science i kept coming across this case of herbet weinstein. He appears in scores of textbooks and medical journals and law reviews, one of the most widely studied cases in the burgeoning intersection of neuroscience. Like a lot of other people i was really puzzled to understand why a man of no history of violence would murder his wife. I wondered if this growth in his head, a sister the size of an orange had discussed cause enough brain impairment to explain or excuse what he did. In all the legal and medical journals no one told the story, no one ever spent time understanding who herbet weinstein was. He was more of a case study. I wanted to get behind the scenes and learn more about the case opening a whole new era in Americas Court rooms so along the way, investigating this, i took out court files and interviewed people who knew herbet weinstein, transcript of the case to put this case together. I also found a long fascinating history about the history of brain injuries and how they affect personality and behavior. One of the most unusual and famous cases that you have heard of is phineas gage, the most famous case in neuroscience. He was a Railroad Worker in the 1840s who suffered a horrific on the job injury. He was preparing an explosive charge to clear some rock, to make way for the railroad and using a tamping iron to tap down the explosive charge. Tamping iron is a rod about this big, made of metal. While he was doing it it set off a spark. What happened was it shot off like a rocket, it shot through his eye into his brain and out the back of his head and landed several feet away. Not only does gage survive this which was amazing enough but he was chatting to the people as he was carted off for medical care but what made this case important in the world of understanding brain and behavior and neuroscience was gages personality was said to have changed significantly after this accident. He became rude, erratic, he was a changed person. His doctors said, quote, he was fitful, irreverent and grossly profane. Since then it has been widely accepted that the change in gages behavior was directly tied to his brain injury and it is important because it linked specific behavior to a specific part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, so it was the first case documented to tie frontal lobe injury to Behavioral Changes. From this spring this idea that if you sustain brain damage, particularly in the frontal lobe you may experience mild to profound changes in your personality and those changes, you can use them as a criminal defense. Decades of Research Following the gauge incident confirm the ideas at the frontal lobe is the area we have executive function and certain behaviors tied to that area and if the frontal lobe is damaged it can impair your judgment but that is not enough to make a legal case. Not enough for a Legal Defense with an insanity defense which is used in court is very rarely required that a person cannot understand or appreciate the nature or consequences of their actions as they dont understand the difference between right and wrong. The insanity defense is for people who have serious psychotic problems, mental illness, other Mental Health problems, very rare, tough case to prove. Right now most of the time the brain defenses are used, when i say brain defense, neuroscience in a courtroom, brain scan is in Death Penalty cases, use during hearings called mitigations, where persons has artie been convicted of a crime or murder in this case and lawyers try to get them life and do this in the mitigation hearings which has more relaxed rules of evidence and they can be presents friends, family, they can bring a brain scan, show that this person is damaged and talk about poverty and they are successful in this realm using Brain Science to help their clients get life instead of death so in effect lawyers are all but expected to do this now, cases where people have been sentenced to death and their lawyers file appeals claiming ineffective assistance of counsel because their lawyers didnt order brain scans during sentencing. It is a matter of routine but the brain defense is also emerging in very unusual and extreme ways. I went to florida to meet a lawyer who every one of his clients has been through a brain scan. Doesnt matter if it is for dui or firstdegree murder and they have to pay for it which costs 3000. It is a rich person at defense, most people cant afford to do that, most Public Defense options would report for brain scan so this is extreme. I would like to read a few pages from my book about this particular lawyer to give a taste of what i have written. The type is bigger than it is there and my ice is not so good. Not one healthy brain. On a steamy july afternoon in floridas panhandle a thunderstorm is moving fast. The heirs, clouds turning black. Stephen cobb, criminal defense attorney, pulled his rented white suv into the parking lot of the oval is a county courthouse in Fort Walton Beach and asked inside just before move just before the storm released its fury. He is just a few minutes for a Court Appearance and heads up to the third floor where he takes a seat on the bench, in the hallway and flipped open his laptop. He puts on a display of colorcoded images of the client who is doing court for sentencing hearing, a young man who was in the airport, charged with soliciting sex with a minor over the internet. Cobb is reviewing images that were taken for single photon emission, it is similar to a type scan and shows brain functioning using a radioactive substance as a camera to create 3d pictures. Cobb holds up his laptop to show the image to counsel interns to me. Reasonable brains do reasonable things, he says with unreasonable brains do unreasonable things. He has an unreasonable brain. When he gets his chance he explained to the judge what he means by a reasonable image. As we speak his client walks in. A tall man in a navy suit with short hair, with his parents and girlfriend with other supporters from eggland air force base, they walk into the courtroom where another proceedings is wrapping up before todays proceedings,s client ryan was 29 years old, agreed to plead guilty and is now facing sentencing and possibility of prison, it is to present a package including brain scan, the client suffers brain dysfunction, with treatment might dissipate blues not long after he was arrested he tried to kill himsel