Rick Halperin
Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:04:09 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
April 23 TEXAS: San Antonio death-row inmate loses high court appeal A street gang member condemned for his role as the driver of the car used during a fatal shooting amid a night-long robbery spree lost an appeal Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court. Kenneth Eugene Foster, 30, in his third appeal to the high court, had been arguing his capital murder conviction in the 1996 shooting death of Michael LaHood Jr., 25, was unconstitutional. A federal district judge had agreed with Foster that the Bexar County jury that convicted him and decided he should be executed may not have properly determined he acted recklessly in the slaying, a condition of his death sentence. The judge also agreed with Foster's questioning of whether he played a major role in the activities leading to LaHood's death. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last October, however, reversed the lower court ruling and Foster asked the Supreme Court to review the reversal. The justices Monday refused. Foster does not have an execution date. Mauriceo Brown, 31, 1 of his 3 companions during the 1996 robbery wave, was executed last year. Brown was identified as the LaHood's shooter. Brown, 31, confessed that he and the others were high on marijuana and alcohol when they were arrested about an hour after the shooting. Brown and Foster received death sentences. Dwayne Dillard and Julius Steen received long prison terms. The attack capped a spree by the gang members who called themselves the Hoover 94 Crips. The men were cruising San Antonio, robbing people, and at least 4 others were reported as victims that night. With Foster driving, they spotted LaHood and his girlfriend driving in separate cars and began following them, winding up at LaHood's driveway at about 2 a.m.. According to testimony, Brown jumped out, walked up to LaHood, demanded his car keys, then opened fire when LaHood couldn't produce the keys. LaHood, shot through the eye, died instantly. Less than an hour later, Foster was pulled over for speeding and driving erratically. All of them were on probation for earlier felonies and were arrested for LaHood's death. Brown blamed the shooting on Dillard, now serving life for killing a taxi driver across the street from the Alamo 2 weeks before LaHood was killed. Steen testified at Brown's trial and received a life sentence in a plea bargain. Brown testified the shooting was in self-defense, that he believed LaHood had a gun and that he heard it click. Authorities, however, never found another weapon near LaHood's body. Foster and Brown were tried jointly. Foster argued that because he did nothing more than agree to commit and participate in the robberies, his death sentence was improper. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals earlier upheld Foster's conviction and sentence under the state's law of parties, which makes a participant in the act that leads to a slaying as culpable as the actual killer. (source: Associated Press) ************ Family Badge----Justices to eye Texas death case Incoherent as it might be, the babbling of a murderer from Fredericksburg could soon offer new insight into the recently reconfigured Supreme Court and its approach toward capital punishment. This week, the justices will consider whether schizophrenic death row inmate Scott Panetti must be spared because, as the court said previously, it's cruel and unconstitutional to execute the insane. Part of what makes the case a potential guidepost is that the newest justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito haven't yet said much about capital punishment and only a thin layer of Supreme Court precedent directly addresses psychosis and the death penalty. Ultimately, any ruling on the execution of a mentally ill inmate who jabbers about satanic persecution will call on the court to conduct a gut check, said Douglas Berman, an Ohio State University law professor. "At some point, it's just, 'Wow, this goes too far' or 'It doesn't go too far,'" said Berman, who teaches a death-penalty course. "It strikes me that those cases tend to be the most revealing." Panetti's long history of bizarre behavior is only one of several elements that add intriguing potential to the case, which will be debated during oral arguments Wednesday. The case presents an opening for the justices to further scale back the death penalty's reach, a potential trend that began before Roberts and Alito joined the court, with rulings protecting juveniles and inmates with mental retardation. The case also offers the justices another chance to rebuke the courts that monitor Texas' use of the death penalty. Several recent reversals have suggested some justices believe the state too readily ignores flaws in capital convictions. This term, the court is reviewing four death cases from Texas. Many believe Panetti owes his spot among them partly to his outlandish performance at the trial, where he babbled at times and wore cowboy garb while acting as his own lawyer. Panetti had been hospitalized more than a dozen times and diagnosed as schizophrenic by 1992 when he barged into the home of his parents-in-law and shot them with a .30-06 caliber rifle, while his estranged wife and toddler looked on. The 1st jury couldn't decide if he was competent, but a second panel found him fit to stand trial. As his own attorney, the first witness Panetti confronted was his former wife. Panetti told her she looked lovely and asked her to recall how they met. Then, he asked her detailed but not-always coherent questions about her parents' murders. "Now," he said at one point, "I was two paces away from your mom and dad and shot them. She ended up here, but your with burden, that you didn't remember where she was at, but she got splattered with blood and your blood all over the place?" Sonja Alvarado long ago lost faith in law enforcement and the legal system and said no longer cares whether her ex-husband receives his death sentence or lives behind bars. Her sister Minnie Ybarbo firmly believes her former brother-in-law is too dangerous to live and that his delusions are bogus. "Scott is a very good actor," she said. Perhaps the most striking plea for mercy comes from Panetti's daughter, who last saw her dad when she was 3 years old and watched him shoot her grandparents. Now 18, Amanda Alvarado stopped responding to her dad's letters around the time she was 11. Even so, she opposes his execution. "'Cuz he's my dad," she said. "I'd rather my dad be living ... than be dead." So far state and federal courts have refused to spare Panetti, despite his assertions that his execution represents a conspiracy between Texas and the forces of evil to silence his preaching of the Gospel. The Supreme Court's benchmark 1986 ruling in the case of Florida inmate Alvin Ford offers limited guidance. Then, the majority cited hundreds of years of legal opposition to the execution of insane criminals but never articulated what inmates needed to prove sufficient madness. Panetti's lawyers now want the court to embrace a concurring opinion by Justice Lewis Powell, who insisted that inmates must understand the connection between their crimes and their punishment for their executions to proceed. The inmate's attorneys contend that, if Panetti is sane enough to receive a lethal injection, then no one is too deranged for the death penalty and the court's 1986 ruling is meaningless. "He believes Satan's been trying to execute him since he was a child," said Andrea Keilen of the Texas Defender Service, which represents Panetti. Texas believes Panetti's exaggerating his lunacy. But even if he's sincere, the state says requiring inmates to rationally understand their punishments would be too lenient a standard. Few death row inmates are entirely rational otherwise they wouldn't be murderers and many suffer some degree of mental illness, said Ted Cruz, the state's solicitor general. "Under Panetti's test, a significant number of those could be rendered immune from being executed despite their heinous crimes," he said. Texas, for example, executed schizophrenic inmate James Colburn 4 years ago. The Supreme Court refused to intervene then when lower courts rejected Colburn's claim. Few are predicting how the justices will decide Panetti's case, but the court recently hinted one way he could lose. 2 weeks ago, the court suddenly requested extra briefing. Never mind insanity; the court wanted to hear whether the case should be dismissed because Panetti had exhausted his appeals. Such a ruling would allow the justices to sidestep deeper and potentially problematic questions embedded in the case, for instance, about the death penalty's purpose. "They may say, 'Y'know what? Let's kick this on procedural grounds and ... dodge all this,'" Berman said. But even a decision that opts for an easy exit would be revealing, the professor said. It would suggest the court's current incarnation has limited interest in monitoring capital punishment. (source: Express-News) OKLAHOMA: Condemned killer pursues appeal of death sentence A man sentenced to death for killing an elderly Depew couple has an appeal of his convictions pending with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. Attorneys for Scott Eizember argued last week that the jury that sentenced him to die was leaning toward imposing the death penalty even before the trial began. Eizember, 46, was convicted in 2005 of murdering A.J. Cantrell, 76, and Patsy Cantrell, 70. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison for the killing of Patsy Cantrell and given the death sentence for the murder of her husband. Eizember broke into the couple's Depew home on Oct. 18, 2003, to watch and wait for his ex-girlfriend to go to her mothers house across the street, authorities said. The Cantrells were killed when they returned to their home and found him there. Eizember also was convicted of shooting his ex-girlfriend's son and of assaulting her mother. In an appeal, Eizember's attorneys allege that their client did not receive an impartial trial because 2 jurors who were biased in favor of the death penalty were allowed to serve on the panel. The result was a jury that was "leaning toward the death penalty before the trial even began," according to Eizember's attorneys. The attorneys, Lee Ann Jones Peters and Jamie Pybas, also argue that the trial court erred by refusing to instruct jurors that Eizember would have had to serve at least 38 years and 3 months before being eligible for parole if they had sentenced him to life with parole possible. The record evidently shows that some jurors may have believed that a life with parole sentence may have meant Eizember could serve no more than seven years in prison. "Instead of easing the jurors' fears ... the court told jurors that no one knows how long a person will remain in prison, that there is no magic number," according a brief filed by Peters and Pybas. Assistant Attorney General Seth Branham wrote in a brief filed with the appeals court that "it is clear the jury was horrified by defendants crimes and intended he be executed." It could be several months before the appellate court renders its decision, Branham said. Eizember was sentenced in Arkansas federal court last July to 25 years in prison for kidnapping a Nashville couple and holding them at gunpoint for 6 hours while he was evading capture after the Cantrell killings. One of his captives shot Eizember, who was arrested shortly thereafter, bringing a 37-day manhunt to a close. (source: Associated Press) KENTUCKY: Execution foes court churches ---- State group hopes to reach lawmakers 4 parishioners from St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church who oppose capital punishment dropped by the Fort Thomas home of Republican state Rep. Joseph M. Fischer one morning last year. Fischer provided pastries. The parishioners came bearing food for thought. "They urged me to consider my position and to pray, and they said they would pray for me," said Fischer, a death penalty supporter and a lifelong member of St. Catherine. "I wouldn't say it altered my position. It certainly gave me some important things to think about." Such meetings have been happening around the state for a year now, as Kentucky's most visible anti-death penalty group has added a tactic to its campaign: enlisting people in religious communities to influence legislators. The Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty a year ago contracted with Doug Stern to discuss the death penalty within selected churches -- generally, those in districts of some legislative leaders and lawmakers on the House and Senate judiciary committees. And after a full year of that work, the coalition board was sufficiently satisfied to renew Stern's contract for another year at salary and expenses totaling about $15,000 -- roughly half of the coalition's annual budget. The coalition has long sent speakers to community groups around the state, but typically only when asked. Now, Stern, 54, a Louisville resident, is opening the phone book and seeking out churches. "Doug is doing this in a way that is more personal, I think," said the Rev. Patrick Delahanty, a Catholic priest who is Kentucky's highest-profile cleric in the campaign against capital punishment. "He is making the 1-on-1 contacts with ministers and religious leaders that I think in the long run will bear more fruit and generate more activity." Still, Stern does not know if he yet has changed anyone's mind, and Delahanty acknowledges that progress on the issue will be "slow." The idea is to identify legislators who have indicated at least a willingness to listen on the issue, and then to reach their constituents in church communities -- constituents who presumably have much in common with the legislators themselves. "If you were to find the staunchest proponent for the death penalty, if that person could be entirely honest, I believe that there would be just a little bit of doubt in their mind," said Stern, a freelance writer and marketing consultant who described himself as by "birthright Jewish" but a "practicing Quaker" for about a decade. By approaching churches, the coalition is accenting the religious dimensions of the death penalty debate -- dimensions arguably framed by formal acts of the state's two largest religious bodies, the Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. In 1995, Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical The Gospel of Life, said that an offender should not be executed "except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society," and that such cases today are "very rare, if not practically non-existent." Death penalty abolitionists lean on that view. The Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 passed a resolution supporting the death penalty "as a legitimate form of punishment" when there is "clear and overwhelming evidence of guilt." Baptists emphasize that such a resolution is not binding on individual churches and is only a snapshot of the opinion of the gathering that approved it. The Kentucky Baptist Convention has never enacted a resolution on the subject, according to Robert Reeves, its communications director. Looking for momentum Opponents in Kentucky say they are buoyed by developments suggesting that public opinion is moving on the issue. For example, they point out that the death penalty is on hold for various reasons in 14 of the 38 states that have it, and last fall, the University of Kentucky's Survey Research Center, in a poll commissioned by the coalition, found that 67 percent of Kentuckians polled preferred a long sentence or life without parole over the option of execution. Stern said that the UK survey results translate into a conclusion that "my job is pretty easy," with 2.2 million Kentuckians preferring imprisonment to death. "I don't really have to be in the arguing and convincing business. In a room, seven out of 10 people will share my view," he said -- although it is also true that in the 1990s, polls found two-thirds of Kentuckians favored the death penalty. He said he has made about two trips per month over the last year around the state. Stern was a logical person for the job because of his easy manner and commitment to the issue, Delahanty said, commenting that he can "speak to just about anyone on the death penalty and not enrage anyone." Stern, who holds a master's degree in architectural history from the University of Virginia, calls himself a "do-gooder." Last month, Stern met with 8 or 10 ministers in Western Kentucky, hoping to persuade them to speak with Democratic state Rep. Brent Yonts of Greenville, among others. The difficulty of the task was soon evident. "I shared with Mr. Stern that I am not a lobbyist -- that if he wanted to speak with Mr. Yonts or any other legislators, he needed to contact them in Frankfort," said the Rev. Gary McAbee, pastor of the church Yonts attends, First Baptist Church of Greenville. McAbee said he believes his church contains death penalty proponents and opponents. His own views, he said, are "mixed." Those views are shaped in part by the fact that his 1st cousin, Anthony Keith Johnson, was executed by lethal injection by Alabama in 2002 following Johnson's conviction in a robbery-murder. Sometimes capital punishment is appropriate, McAbee said. "There are other times where I think that it's used more to make political points than it is to serve justice." 'State's right and duty' Fischer contends that the fact that Kentucky has used the death penalty only twice in the past 4 decades -- in 1997 and 1999 -- qualifies its use as "rare" within the meaning of the pope's 1995 letter. "This is one of the most important powers that the state has, to take a human life. I think we must proceed cautiously and in a moral manner, and give the accused all of the constitutional rights to which he's entitled. If we do that, I think we are exercising the state's right and duty in a responsible manner," he said. Some Catholics see death penalty opposition as consistent with opposition to abortion -- "part of the same seamless garment," as Fischer said the St. Catherine parishioners put it during the meeting at his home. But Fischer doesn't see the 2 issues that way. "I see that the state has a duty to protect innocent and unborn life and has a right to kill those who take innocent life," he said. Yonts, vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said his Western Kentucky community has not forgotten a kidnapping, rape and murder committed about a decade ago. "I don't think there would be a lot of support in this community for abolition," he said. "I will be in favor of studying the issue to make sure the process is right, to make sure it's still constitutional." (source: Courier-Journal) USA: One Thousand Reasons Documenting the Failures of the Bush Administration----Gonzales's Long Record of Lawlessness Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is under intense scrutiny these days over the firing of eight federal prosecutors, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling for Gonzales's resignation. Not only does it appear that the firings were politically motivated (which is illegal), but Gonzales may have gone so far as to lie about it to Congress. Prior to this latest scandal, Gonzales was perhaps most notorious for his semantic gymnastics to justify the use of torture on detainees in U.S. custody and to protect the torturers from prosecution for war crimes - moves that paved the way for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. Later, so that other countries could do the dirty work for us, Gonzales defended the Bush administration's policy of extraordinary rendition, which is the practice of sending prisoners to other countries (most of which are notorious for their use of torture) for interrogation. Gonzales said that these other countries promised not to torture the people we turn over to them. Right. But you don't have to be a Muslim to get a taste of the Attorney General's war on human rights. Back in February, Gonzales went before the Senate Judiciary Committee and tried to justify his warrantless spying on American citizens. It's apparently too much trouble for Gonzales's team to get the required court warrant for wiretapping. (Getting one requires that you demonstrate reasonable cause.) Now let's go back farther, to the 1990s, when Gonzalez served as legal counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush. According to a statement by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP), Gonzales's track record on death penalty cases in Texas failed to demonstrate a commitment to fairness, due process, and equal protection under the law. "Time and again," reads the statement, "the legal analysis he provided to then-Gov. George W. Bush on the eve of executions failed to include any discussion of the most salient issues, including severe mental retardation and mental illness, abysmally poor legal representation and, in more than a handful of cases, even credible claims of innocence." So there you have it: Gonzales failed to disclose evidence that may have prompted then-Governor Bush to commute the death penalty for a possibly innocent person. In short, Gonzales's long-term track record has proven him to be an eager participant in George W. Bush's culture of death, disregard for human rights, and disdain for the rule of law. The federal prosecutor scandal resulted in eight lawyers losing their jobs for no good reason. That's bad enough. But Gonzales's previous transgressions have resulted in unlawful detentions, torture, and death. If this latest scandal is what finally calls Gonzales to accountability, then it's a positive step towards restoring true justice in the U.S. But we must not lose sight of Gonzales's other offenses, and he should be held accountable for all of them. Gonzales's position is that of the nation's highest law enforcement official. As such, he was entrusted with the responsibility of protecting our rights and freedoms, and defending the Constitution. Instead, he has built a career on finding creative ways of ignoring or undermining the rules while evading accountability for himself and for those he served. It's time to give Mr. Gonzales a refresher course on U.S. and international law, and the consequences of breaking them. (source: One Thousand Dreams; Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She currently serves as Philadelphia Area Coordinator for Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Unless otherwise noted, the ideas expressed in this article are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty or any other organization with which she may be associated) ***************** The Trial Judge as Adversary on Appeal The very first thing that the federal appellate judge for whom I clerked would read when a new set of appellate briefs reached his desk was the trial court's opinion. This just goes to show that, if you're representing on appeal a party that lost in the trial court, not only do you have to convince appellate judges that the trial court's ruling was erroneous, you also have to overcome the fact that the appellate judges' introduction to the case likely consisted of reading the trial judge's explanation for why the ruling challenged on appeal is correct. In the federal court system, the trial court typically explains its ruling before the case heads for appeal. By contrast, in the state appellate courts of Pennsylvania -- the state in which my appellate practice is based -- trial courts ordinarily do not write any opinion to explain the reasons for their rulings until after an appeal is taken. At that juncture, a Pennsylvania state trial judge can issue an order requiring the appellant's counsel to provide a list of the issues that the appellant intends to raise on appeal. The trial judge can then write an opinion addressing the issues pertinent to the appeal, while bypassing irrelevant issues. I've heard it said that a talented trial judge can write an opinion that reads like a persuasive brief in support of affirmance of a trial court decision. However, in Pennsylvania, trial judges sometimes take the goal of being upheld on appeal a bit too personally. I have seen post-appeal opinions from Pennsylvania state trial judges that conclude by urging the appellate court to affirm the order on appeal for the reasons given in that very opinion. That strikes me as a bit unseemly. I don't fault trial judges for wishing to avoid reversal on appeal. Trial judges ought to be concerned about reaching the result that the law and the facts compel -- and one way that trial judges learn if they have in fact done so is whether their decisions are affirmed or reversed on appeal. On the other hand, sometimes the law changes after a trial judge has ruled, or the law was unclear when the trial judge ruled. In those situations, a reversal does not prove that a trial judge did a bad job on the case. Not too long ago, I worked on a petition filed in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in a case where the trial judge initially denied a plaintiff's motion for a new trial but, following the plaintiff's filing of an appeal, wrote an opinion concluding that the motion for a new trial should have been granted because certain excluded evidence favoring the plaintiff should have been admitted into trial. However, because the case was already on appeal, the trial judge lacked the power to set aside her denial of the new trial motion. Only the court in which the appeal was pending could take that action. In the Pennsylvania state court system, as elsewhere, a trial court's decisions whether to grant a new trial or admit or exclude evidence are reviewed for abuse of discretion. On direct appeal, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania -- which is an intermediate appellate court -- reviewed for abuse of discretion the original order denying a new trial rather than the trial court's post-appeal opinion providing an explanation for why a new trial should be granted. The petition for allowance of appeal that I filed in Pennsylvania's highest court presented a question of first impression: "Where a trial court rules against the appellant on an issue that is subject to abuse of discretion review on appeal, but the trial court later concludes in the course of preparing its opinion that the trial court should have ruled in favor of the appellant on that very same issue, which decision of the trial court -- the initial ruling adverse to the appellant or the later reasoned decision in favor of the appellant -- is entitled to the appellate court's deference under the abuse of discretion standard of review?" It was my client's position that only the decision for which reasons had been supplied could be subjected to review for abuse of discretion. Thus, it was also my client's position that only if the grant of a new trial constituted an abuse of discretion could the appellate court affirm the trial court's earlier, unreasoned denial of a new trial. Instead of analyzing the issue in that manner, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania merely concluded that the denial of a new trial did not constitute an abuse of discretion. Thus, in Pennsylvania at least, the trial judge regularly gets to file a post-appeal opinion that often reads like the trial judge's own brief in support of affirmance. But if the trial judge changes his mind when writing that post-appeal opinion and concludes that the order being appealed was wrong or represented an improper exercise of discretion, then the appellate court can entirely ignore the opinion. I'm not sure whether a trial judge places into his victory or loss column an affirmance that follows the trial judge's confession of reversible error in a post-appeal opinion. Of course, trial judges should write opinions that make a convincing case for affirmance because the ability to do so typically demonstrates that the trial court's ruling was proper. I also think that trial judges should confess error if they determine, in the course of writing a post-appeal opinion, that the decision challenged on appeal was erroneous, and such a confession of error should receive due deference from the appellate court. What crosses the line is when a trial judge urges the appellate court to affirm his ruling in the trial judge's opinion. Trial judges should focus on the goal of having justice prevail, and not merely on maintaining an enviable win-loss record on appeal. (source: Howard J. Bashman; Law.com) ******************** Study of brain may show link to violent acts----Experts debate how abnormalities can have an impact on one's behavior In the months after Charles Whitman climbed the University of Texas-Austin tower and began shooting everyone in sight, one rationale offered for why he did it pinned the blame on a brain tumor discovered during his autopsy. The speculation, never accepted or discredited, held that because the tumor pressed on a frontal region of the brain responsible for fear responses and aggression, it triggered Whitman's fatal rage. More than 40 years later, as the nation grapples with Seung-Hui Cho's shooting spree that claimed 32 lives at Virginia Tech University Monday, people still are trying to understand the cause of such madness. Everyone talks about the psychological profile of mass murderers, but, perhaps, a more compelling question involves what if anything is misfiring in their brains. "It's clear Cho had a brain abnormality you'd need no further evidence than his actions to demonstrate that," said David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the school's Laboratory for Law, Brains and Behavior. "But what exactly that abnormality was, what predicts and explains it, we don't know yet." Despite the commonly cited profile of the school shooter male, isolationist, historically abused or bullied a 2000 study by the U.S. Secret Service found there is no "accurate or useful profile." The study noted that academic performances range from excellent to failing, family situations from intact to broken homes and past behavioral problems from none to many. One reason for the uncertainty is that researchers have little evidence to work with. Mass killings are exceedingly rare they were less than 1 percent of all homicides 25 years ago and still are today and the killers typically commit suicide or are shot by police before they can be apprehended. Early stages Another is that brain science still is in its infancy. Neuroimaging, which scans blood flow to determine which parts of the brain are active during various tasks, has identified regions where dysfunction is associated with violent behavior. But it still is too crude to identify exactly what goes on in those minds, Eagleman said. Some of those findings do offer important clues. One is that damage to the frontal region of the brain can shut down internal governors and trigger all kinds of unregulated behavior. For instance, a study in the journal Nature last month found that an injury behind the forehead and inches behind the eyes can transform the way people make moral judgments in life-or-death situations. In the study, people with the injury, often lucid and intelligent but socially awkward, expressed an increased willingness to kill or harm another person if doing so would save others' lives. Autopsy results pending Nothing reported so far has suggested Cho was suffering from any sort of brain injury. Investigators have given no date when they will release results of an autopsy that has been completed. Dr. Frederic Moeller, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, said that because of the premeditation involved, Cho's case sounds like psychosis, typically associated with temporal lobe dysfunction. Dr. Pamela Blake, a Memorial Hermann-The Texas Medical Center neurologist, agreed with Eagleman that the very fact of Cho's act suggests some sort of brain abnormality. Any such abnormality, she said, could have been present at birth or developed over time. Impairments noted Her 2004 study of death row inmates found 40 % suffered from frontal lobe impairments apparent in a series of physical tests involving the coordination of their motor skills. "The thing to remember is that study after study shows these kinds of killers' brains are not normal," Blake said. "Whether the action is premeditated or impulsive or, as is usually the case, a little of both, there's something organically wrong with their brain." Blake emphasized that the idea killers have a brain abnormality should in no way be interpreted as an excuse. If anything, she said, such patients are less likely to respond to rehabilitative efforts and, thus, are more likely to require long-term confinement. Dr. Dennis Landis, Baylor's chairman of neurology, said killing sprees almost never are about a transient event, like a seizure, because the abnormality tends to develop over years and the events take time to plan. If there's any merit to the tumor theory in Whitman's case scientists say it's plausible it could have played a role it would constitute something of an exception; Whitman was considered normal until a few months before the rampage, when headaches and strange behavior led him to seek medical and psychiatric advice. At the same time, many note that lots of people have brain tumors pressing on sensitive areas and don't become mass killers. Eagleman said that also is the case with lots of people who have been bullied and ridiculed. He warned against the sort of retrospective analysis in which everyone claims to spot the important red flags. Eagleman expressed confidence that in time, neuroscience will discover what makes killers kill. For now, he said, the technology isn't there. "Imagine you're looking down from the space shuttle and trying to determine the health of some country," he said. "You may be able to spot massive events, such as forest fires, but smaller details like street riots and a crashing economy are totally invisible from that distance. "So it is with our brain technologies we can often identify large problems but very little at the fine grain." (source: Houston Chronicle) ************ Our zero-tolerance society----A strain of vengefulness has spread through our culture, but the vilification is often out of proportion to the wrongdoing. JUST HOURS after devouring Don Imus for his slurs against the Rutgers University women's basketball team, the media pack was already circling fresh quarry. As the leather-faced hate jock fast became a bad memory, the scandal jackals were, by last weekend, starting to chew up a new menu of reprobates, from U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz to Durham County, N.C., Dist. Atty. Michael B. Nifong. Next week, surely, still other offenders will face the media maw. I am not defending these guys. I believe that the racist Imus - a third-rate Howard Stern with a middlebrow patina - deserved to go, and that Gonzales and Wolfowitz (and possibly Nifong) ought to follow. But the speed and ferocity of the attacks against them and the harsh tenor of the discourse - in these scandals and others like them - hardly reflect a dispassionate pursuit of justice. It's impossible to measure a quality as intangible as public hunger for punishment. But it seems to me that in the last decade or so, a strain of intolerance and vengefulness has spread throughout our culture. Vocal swaths of the public, amplified by the media, have been expressing a primitive, unquenchable desire to inflict stern penalties on supposed wrongdoers - no matter how obscure the offender or how minor the offense. We've repeatedly failed to distinguish among capital crimes, misdemeanors and innocence. We summon the same level of indignation for someone like Gonzales, who apparently tried to turn a professional corps of attorneys into a partisan prosecutorial force, as for someone like the hapless John Kerry after he bungled a joke about the troops last fall and was almost forced into premature retirement. In recent years, this hysteria has exacted apologies, resignations and other pounds of flesh from scores of politicians who have committed only minor gaffes - such as Joe Biden for his clumsy comments about Barack Obama, or Howard Dean for saying in 2003 that Osama bin Laden should get a fair trial. Of course, that may be the price of their vocation. More unseemly is the persecution of other public and semi-public figures, many of whose career choices didn't commit them to a stint in the media hot seat. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, for instance, inadvertently plagiarized - and was mercilessly pilloried in the media for it. She was subsequently removed from various positions, even though she (unlike the unrepentant historian Stephen Ambrose) apologized at length and resolved to make amends. Some moralists called for another eminent historian, Joseph Ellis of Mount Holyoke College, to be sacked for telling tall tales in the classroom about having served in Vietnam; he was suspended for a year. The sloppy, sexist remarks that former Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers made about women and science deserved a reprimand, but they didn't justify the loss of his job, which came fast and furious last spring. Beyond academia, other notable figures have also suffered vilification out of proportion to their sins. Several years ago, sports fans - never the most decorous bunch - erupted in a spasm of rage after Major League Baseball player Roberto Alomar spat at an umpire. It was an act that a few decades ago wouldn't have even made news - even though Alomar had already been suspended for 5 games and apologized to the ump. Other athletes endure opprobrium for lesser slights. The media have even turned on their own, capitulating to politically motivated campaigns to can respected reporters. After a distinguished career, Dan Rather was prematurely retired because a single ill-sourced news segment brought on the wrath of the right-wing blogosphere. So was CNN executive Eason Jordan, on the basis of unofficial, off-the-record comments he made faulting U.S. forces for killing foreign journalists. The left, too, pounced opportunistically in pushing for the dismissal of Judith Miller from the New York Times for her credulous stories about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. >From the Salem witch trials to the two "Red scares," the United States has undergone bouts of manic intolerance worse than today's. Indeed, ever since World War II, and especially since the 1960s, our culture has grown, on the whole, more lenient. We recognize more basic rights than we used to. In fact, what we're now experiencing may be a backlash to the rise of toleration. I first came to view this rigid absolutism as a form of cultural backlash during the drive to impeach President Clinton in 1998. Although I knew that many of Clinton's tormentors were targeting him for purely cynical reasons, other foes seemed moved by genuine anger. Rationally, they grasped that Clinton's statements about Monica Lewinsky didn't bear on the lawsuit against him, yet they insisted, emotionally, that if he'd uttered a single false word under oath - even an irrelevant word - he had to be penalized. That's because the impeachment was about more than Clinton. It was, I think, an effort to symbolically overturn the 1960s revolution in manners and morals that, in the mental universe of the political right, Clinton appeared to embody. The Republican pundit William J. Bennett published a book that year titled "The Death of Outrage," suggesting that the public's capacity for empathy in cases like Clinton's had risen to dangerous levels, requiring a reversion to earlier, less sophisticated codes of conduct. If only we had lacked for outrage during Clinton's presidency! The impeachment debacle, as has become increasingly clear in retrospect, was caused not by a dearth of indignation but a surplus of it - a spilling over of resentment and moralism. Although public majorities insisted that Clinton deserved no great rebuke, their voices were drowned out by the Inquisition. Before Clinton, of course, there had been scandals aplenty; it was in the 1980s, after all, that the term "feeding frenzy" was first applied to journalists instead of sharks. But in the 1990s, a mix of factors came together to create our zero-tolerance scandal culture. The left, displaying what soon came to be called political correctness, ceased forgiving even unintentional slights toward historically oppressed groups. The right - grappling with the stark reality that many values of the 1960s were probably here to stay - began seeking scapegoats. Meanwhile, the advent of the Internet, talk radio and rival all-day cable news stations spawned what critic Frank Rich dubbed "mediathons": days-long orgies of nonstop, trivializing coverage of sensational events. When centered on personal scandals, logic dictated that they should end with someone's head on a stick. Our current zeal to punish may also be related to the terrorist assault of Sept. 11. After that grisly and humiliating day, we all felt a natural desire to strike back and show America's might. And while in some respects we channeled those feelings into a commensurate response, in the form of the attack on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, in another respect we let our hunger for retaliation countenance a largely unrelated invasion of Iraq. We've seen the toll taken by our angry, ill-considered lashing out abroad. There's still time to see the damage being wrought by our lashing out at home as well. (source: Los Angeles Times;Opinion-- DAVID GREENBERG, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University, is the author of books about Richard Nixon and Calvin Coolidge)