Radiolab - Blame

Episode Date: September 12, 2013

We've all felt it, that irresistible urge to point the finger. But new technologies are complicating age-old moral conundrums about accountability. This hour, we ask what blame does for us -- why do we need it, when isn't it enough, and what happens when we try to push past it with forgiveness and mercy?

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From.

W. N. Y. C. See? Yeah. And NPR. Maybe all of us can sit on the catch. I can rug and pull that chair over. So we're going to start with a story from our producer, Pat Walters, about a couple.

Oh, my word. That's the lady. I'm Janet. This is the guy. So I don't need you to introduce yourself. That's usually the thing we do, but we're not telling people who you are. We're going to call him Kevin. Kevin, yeah, yeah, that's my name.

That's suspicious at all. It's not his real name. It'll make sense why we're not using his real name in a second. Okay, you know. So this one starts a few summers ago. It was July 2006. Jan and Kevin were at home. And some people you don't know show up.

And maybe I'll start with you. When they show up at the door. So we were, it was, we were getting ready to go down the shore. It was a Friday. So we, so we're in the kitchen and, and they come to the back door. I thought, I thought that, I thought they might have been firemen just by, you know, the blue shirt and then realized that they were, they were law enforcement. Two women and, I think, two men. More came up from around the, you know, the side of the house. And they show us their badges. Were they cops or? They were Homeland Security. They took me outside.

And they kept me, and they asked me to stay in the kitchen. And they had a woman with me. I didn't know what was going on. Nobody said anything to me. What are they saying to you on the porch, meanwhile? When they showed up, and I got to the door, he said, you know why we're here? I said, yeah, I do. I was expecting you.

And I showed him where everything was. This story about Kevin and his wife, Janet, inspired us to do the entire hour. Mm-hmm. Because one of the most basic things that we, do as people is we judge. We judge one another. We judge what's right. Judge what's wrong. But this story and the two that follow... They will make you judge how you judge, or at least they had that effect on us. And we're calling our show, blame. I'm Chad, Ibumrod. I'm Robert Crilwich, and we'll go back to Pat. Before we do, you should know that this show contains some graphic,

difficult descriptions in a few spots. If you're not in the mood or if you have kids around, you might want to sit this one out. Okay. So, What happened in that first scene and what happens next only makes sense if we go back a little first. About 15 years. It's just an ordinary day. Kevin's going home from work. And I was driving home going about 65, 70 in the fast lane when suddenly there was a thump in my chest. Then heat.

Just a heat burning. After that, he said suddenly he had this thickness in my tongue, in my throat, then a foul taste in his mouth. Then my hearing faded out. And he thought, it's back. When I finally did come too, uh... He sees his car is smashed into the side of an apartment building. I do recall the officers telling, you know, you've been in an accident, you've been in an...

And he remembers one of them... ...insisted that he smelled alcohol. And I was talking through clenched teeth because I had bit my tongue. and my cheeks. I was saying over and over again, I had a seizure. I had a seizure. Kevin's got epilepsy.

He's had it since he was a teenager. But two years before this all happened, he'd had surgery to remove the part of his brain that was causing the seizures. And it seemed to have worked. He was doing great. Essentially wasn't having seizures anymore. Until suddenly he was.

Lost your license? I lost my license for a year. Things had kind of taken a nosedive. Like here he is. He's 35 years old. I'm living with my brother. I'm divorced. And I have to call my daddy and ask him now to drive me to and from work.

And you think I need to do something. This is not sustainable. No. No, don't need that. So I walked into the office. Ask the HR person where he works for a list of all the employees. Give me a list of everybody and where they're from. So she pulled it up.

I go down the list and I get to Janet Woodruff Bloomfield. only when it's really close to me, five minutes away. So I walk to her cube, knocked on the wall, and introduced myself. Like, hey, my name's Kevin. I also work here. I've got this thing, though. It's kind of awkward.

I can't drive. And I was wondering if you'd give me a ride. And she said yes. I really passed by his street, I mean, on the way to work. So it was... Like right on his street. Pretty much. But I made it clear.

you know, I'll do it when I can. And as they drove together, they start talking, finding out a little bit more about each other. Notice pretty quickly. We like the same music. And that was unique because I sort of like music that was probably more in his error. Kevin was seven years older than jam. What kind of music were you listening to? Jackson Brown mostly.

A lot of Jackson Brown. James Taylor. Bonnie Raid. You know, Elton John. They found themselves. singing along to the lyrics. You cannot sing with somebody day in and day out and not have something happen.

We wound up as the spring came, you know, it's getting nice out, so now it's like, well, let's not go home. Let's go out for a beer after war. We're becoming good friends. We liked each other. But for Kevin, it was a little more serious than that. I'm thinking about her, and I'm starting to wake up at night. And one day in May, as Janet is dropping him off,

Kevin turns to her and he says, Hey, I really appreciate what you've done for me. Let me take you to dinner, just as friends, just as friends. Jan says, sure. So, May 30th, 1992. Highland Pavilion. Nicest restaurant in town. So your friend takes you to a four-star restaurant.

You're thinking right away... He thinks this is a date. We're going on a date. Come on. So now I'm panic-stricken. We have our dinner. We leave. We had a wonderful time. She drops me off, and I handed her the poem.

What did the poem say? Do you still have it? Yeah, I do. Okay, this is a little slower. Each time we sing on the way home, I pray that traffic back. up so we can sing together just a little longer and the harmony can go on forever. And each time we reach my door, I feel robbed because we're always in mid-song or mid-thought.

He gets out and goes inside and probably thinks, awesome, I gave her the poem, she's going to be so smitten with me and you go home and what? I want to throw up. I just thought, oh, God, you know. Next day. I just looked at him and said, listen, we got to clarify. This is clearly just going to be a friendship. He was seven years older than me.

He had this brain surgery. He has epilepsy. He's divorced. He has two children. Are you catching the compassion here? I'm trying. And he's just like, I'm not asking you to marry me. I'm asking you to go out on a few dates.

Exactly. If you go out with me like four times in the next six months, I'm ahead of the game. He just handled it. And I don't think it was long at all. I can't even remember, but it wasn't long at all before we were like a couple. And Kevin? I'm dopey. Dopey in love.

Oh, yeah, yeah. He's doing romantic things for her all the time. Flowers, poems, and paintings. Illustration of the Jackson Brown cover. And within a year? We were engaged. But all the while, Kevin is having seizures. Yeah.

Since the car accident, more and more. There was a point where we were obviously dating. She was helping to make his bed. And, um... He says she pulled off the pillowcase. It's covered with blood stains. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. You can count the number of seizures that I had

and bit through my tongue and bled. I knew nothing about epilepsy. I had never seen anybody have a seizure. In my past, those would have been big red flags that I would have just walked away, but I just went with it. And they both went with it for a few years, until finally Kevin and Jan decide this is enough.

I wanted to be done with it. I just needed to be done with it. So they schedule a brain surgery, which sounds like a big deal, and obviously it is, but they had every reason to think that this wouldn't change him. I honestly thought that he was going to come out of it fine, better.

Because that's what happened the first time. Kevin had actually gone through a brain surgery, much like this one once before, and he'd come out pretty much the same guy. He was still himself. In fact, he made sure of it. I was awake for the surgery. That's crazy.

I had to be awake. It had to do with music. Kevin is a musician, and the first of the first of the first of, Doctors told him, they said that if I lost anything, I was going to lose my appreciation for music, that it would be like music would be white noise. I said, no, for me, music was, you know, is part of my personality. It was how I coped with my darkest moments in dealing with epilepsy and seizures.

At 18 years old, I'd have a seizure. I'd take my harmonica, and I'd find a place with decent reverb somewhere, and be right where I needed to be. I didn't want to lose that part of me. So as the doctors were doing the brain surgery, they had his head open, they asked him to sing. Do you remember what you sing? End of the Innocence, some James Taylor. And while he sang, they would tickle different parts of his brain.

And if they ever touched the part that made him stop singing, they'd say, okay, that's a part we cannot take out. Wow. Yeah. And in the end? I think they ended up taking out like four and a half centimeters. Like a, you know, a little bit bigger than a golf ball. Wow. But afterwards, as he was recovering...

I had my keyboard in the room, and I tried playing right away. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And it worked. The part of him that he really cared about was still there. Exactly. Yeah, he was a man I fell in love with after the first surgery. So I thought, well, you know...

Now that they've got to do a second surgery... He's already been there on this road. We're fine. And after that second surgery, he did seem fine. Janet didn't have her brother sneak my keyboard up to the room again. He was very, very adamant that he wanted that keyboard. I played a little. Just noodled a couple of notes, played a couple of things, and it was like, okay, I'm there. Still me.

I was ready to go. So you go home, and, like, it seems to have worked. Yeah. As far as seizures go, we thought, okay, this is it. We're home free. And I was just happy to have some normalcy. But then, in the winter. By beginning the middle of January.

Kevin noticed he wanted to eat. My physical appetite. A lot more than usual. Got like insane. This is a guy who didn't eat breakfast. He had minimal lunch and he'd have a sensible dinner, maybe a snack. That was it. But now?

I could eat the couch. It just was odd. It was not him normally, but you know, you're like, okay. She thought maybe it's just a side effect from the medications. But then? The piano. You'd play the piano for hours. The same songs they used to sing in the car together.

If he had stuck on a piece, he would play it for hours. Like how many hours? Eight. Eight, nine. And then there was sex. You know, we were a happy, healthy couple. Kevin's nodding. Yeah, it was fine.

But what was abnormal was it was anywhere. Clearly, it wasn't like, oh, we're in the supermarket, let's have sex here. I mean, it wasn't like that. But, I mean, it was like, I could just walk in the kitchen from buying out of work. And he'd be like, oh, let's go here. Which struck her as weird. But then again... We were thinking, you know, let's try to have a family.

So the timing made things confusing. And more than that, it wasn't like any of this stuff was out of character exactly. In fact, it was all stuff that she liked about him. Yeah. Except now it was all turned up to 11. All the things that were wonderful became chores. And that's pretty much where things were at when those federal agents showed up in July of 2006. I was just completely blindsided.

He said, you know why we're here? I said, yeah, I do. I was expecting you. Kevin took the agents upstairs. I took him right into here where my computer was. And they arrested him for what was on that computer. I gave it up to him right away. warning this next passage contains some graphic imagery i mean i i hadn't i don't know if i had fully like i think i had just like let child porn be this kind of vague thing that meant

someone younger than 18 but then i read some of the court documents and there were like toddlers there were picked videos of two three and four year olds These sites had the most despicable, disgusting things you can imagine. Infants on through, you know, preteen and, you know, pre-adolescence. And you bought these things and put them on your computer. Yeah. Yeah, it bothers me. It bothers me.

Like I said, initially it was, you know, it was just your base, your base. you know, heterosexual, heterosexual, playboy-like, penthouse-like sites, and then windows would just start to open up. Pretty soon he says he was going everywhere. There was gay sex, they were, I mean, there was bondage, there was defecation sex, there was animal sex, xenosex.

I went everywhere that a button came up to push. I still don't understand it. understand it. I still don't understand it. You say it disturbs you and you feel terrible, but I just like wonder like, how do you, do you tell yourself like that wasn't me? Like, how do you explain it to yourself to, so that you can kind of, I don't know, not feel like you're as bad as the person who goes there without a brain injury is, you know? Like, say that again. Ask that question.

I guess I'm just wondering, I don't know, like knowing that that's a thing that you did, and it sounds like, obviously you know that that was a wrong thing and it was a terrible thing. But it was,

it was you who did it, or was it not? I don't know. You know what I mean? No, it was, it was me who did it, but it was me with a complete lack

of neurological control. You know, I mean, I know, I know, know who I am. I did idiotic things that I couldn't stop myself from doing. I didn't want to do it. There would be nights where it would be four, five, six hours of going to the same site and downloading one or two files and then deleting them, going back a minute later, downloading the same files,

deleting them. I would download those files a dozen times and delete them a dozen times because I didn't want to be there, knew I shouldn't be there, and couldn't help myself from going back. I'm not an idiot. I mean, I'm a smart guy. I'm not an idiot. But I know I had no control. And that's what he would argue in court. Kevin Wood pleaded guilty, but at the sentencing hearing,

he asked the judge to be lenient, arguing essentially that the person who did all those things in some sense wasn't him. It was some other part of his brain that he couldn't control. At the hearing, he called one witness. Orrin Davinsky, I'm a neurologist and epilepsy specialist, NYU Medical Center. He's been treating Kevin for decades. 20, 20-some-odd years. And he says as soon as he found out what Kevin had been doing, he had a terrible sense of responsibility. This is because of the

brain surgery. The surgery Orrin recommended he have. And he argued in court that this was not Kevin's fault. I remember looking at those agents right in their face and saying to them and to the judge, this could be anybody. This could be those agents judge. This could be you. This could be me. This could be anybody, and we would have no control over what we did. And explain to the court what the biology was. That the way the brain is organized is that there are parts of our brain that are way deep down that control like base desires. Like hunger, sex.

Keeps us alive, but it's teeming with the nastiest thoughts. We all have these crazy thoughts in our head. Now, in most of us, those thoughts are kept in check because there are other parts of our brain that sit on top and act like a lid. But in Kevin's case, the brain surgeon who did that surgery removed part of that filter. And suddenly... The cork was off. I mean, it was just no lid on his sexual desires.

He says scientists have known about this condition for a long time. They first saw in monkeys. In rhesus monkeys. When the monkeys would lose roughly the same part of the brain that Kevin lost. They became very hypersexual, males that would only previously be sexually involved with females. now we're 10 times more sexually active with both males and females. But it feels to me, feels to me like there would be a brighter line before kids, you know? I think there is a line for quote-unquote normal individuals,

but in a brain disorder case, those lines get blurred. And he told the court, that's what happened here. It was black and white. Kevin was sick, and his behavior was out of his control. Well, that's not what the fact showed in this case. This is Lee Martin, who was the prosecutor. We saw no evidence of impulsivity. He says, if you're claiming that he had no control, that his brain made him do it,

then how come he had all this child porn on his home computer? I believe it was 52 videos and 125 images. And yet, on his work computer? There were zero images, zero videos of child pornography on his work computer. And he worked a lot. He held down a job. He was working every day. If he truly lacked impulse control, I would think, you would see child pornography on both computers.

And so what he argued back was what? Was the lid on at work and off at home? Seems to me to be an easy out. So the answer is that this is common with neurologic disease. They tend not to be 24-7. He says take something like Tourette. Some people, when they're engaged in playing sports, they tend not to have ticks. Whereas when they're sitting around bored are stressed, they do tend to take.

tend to have ticks. So you could say, well, Tourette's clearly isn't a neurological disorder. But no, Tourette's is a neurologic disorder. We understand some of the brain things that go on Tourette's. The prosecution didn't buy it. They just thought it was Hogwash. What was hogwash was his level of certainty. The prosecution asked that Kevin be sent to prison for five years.

Because in paying for child porn, he was supporting an industry that does terrible things to kids. Kevin hoped he'd avoid jail time altogether and instead be placed on house arrest. I asked for Janet, right after the arrest. I have to imagine that you were in shock a little. Yeah. She'd gone to see a lawyer. And one of the questions he asked was, is this marriage going to survive this? And I said, I don't know.

And at that point, understand, I didn't even know the level of pictures. But she says the moment she heard Orrin say that this was a brain disorder with a name, it's called Clue Verbusy syndrome. Once I was able to get that for me, It clicked. She couldn't blame him. We have these experts saying that it was a disease, and I kept thinking they'll understand. Not to mention that after Kevin was arrested and got out on bail,

Orrin gave him some medication, and Janet says it was like flipping a switch. That's exactly what it was. It was like I got him back. I was able to sit and watch a movie with her. You know, normal. Janet actually says in a lot of ways, those few months between the arrest and the sentencing hearing,

they'd been the best months of their marriage. was just so much easier, calmer. You could just talk. The hearing took about three hours. And when it was over, the judge took a recess, went into her chambers. When she came back, she delivered her decision. She actually wouldn't talk to me for this story,

but I have the transcript from the hearing. And if you remember, the prosecutor, Lee Varitan was asking for five years. 63 months. Or in Kevin Janet were hoping for... House arrest. Meaning no jail time. There's no way they're going to put him in jail. This is clear cut.

And here's what the judge does. She says, I do agree with Orne. It is a neurological disorder. No question. So he can't be held fully responsible for his behavior. She was getting it. On the other hand, she said the prosecution did have a point. That he was very much in control of his impulses.

At least some of the time. And so the question for the judge was, how does a legal system assign blame when a person is sometimes themselves and in control and sometimes not? Well, this was a crime, she said, a crime which ultimately leads to children being harmed and considering that you did have moments where you were in control, then in those moments you had a responsibility.

You could have done something. You could have asked for help. You could have told the people around you what you were doing, so even if you couldn't have stopped yourself, they could have stopped you. She made it very clear that we have to do something here. His sentence? 26 months. at a federal prison and...

25 months of house arrest. And I believe that she was fair, and I believe she was compassionate. And about a week before Christmas, in 2008, Janet drove him to prison. How long was he in jail for? About two years. And she was, even though the judge said, you know, he is responsible, did that change her attitude toward him at all?

No. they totally stuck together. She visited him pretty much every weekend the whole time. I knew the route and I had my own little routine down. In between visits, she'd send up notes. And I'll never forget, he could send me mail. They had a store where he could get some cards. Super hallmarky.

And he would like alter them. And I remember the very first card I got, it was this very, you know, beautiful supposedly, it's supposed to be beautiful. But it was like, you know, if you need anything, you know, anything at all, just let me know. And then he writes, of course, if it's pressing, you might want to ask someone else because, oh, well, you can wait 24 months. And I remember getting that and just laughing. And then that became our thing, like, listen, this is a horrible situation.

But we're going to make the best of it. Tell me a little bit about, like, where things are at now. I think things are almost normal. Oh, you know, I am still on probation. But he's home. He's working. Life is going on. have our normal routines. Kevin still takes those medicines that keep the other part of him in check. I have no libido at all. But I know who I am. I know what I am. I'm disturbed by that portion of my life, but I'm trying to move on. Producer Pat Walters. Thanks also to neurologist Orrind Vinsky for connecting us to Kevin and Janet. Stay with us. We'll be exploring these questions of Blame and responsibility even more deeply the next segment. Even yell about it a little.

Yeah. Coming up. Hi, I'm Nick, and I'm from Minneapolis. Radio Lab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Hey, I'm Chad Abumran.

I'm Robert Crulwich. Today on Radio Lab. Blame. In the story we just heard, we were, wrestling with a very difficult question. When somebody has a brain injury and commits a crime, just how much do we blame them and how much do we blame the brain? Yeah, and as it turns out this question?

Hi. Hi, this is Chad. Hi, Chad. It's Nita. That question is popping up more and more in court cases where increasingly you will find defendants like Kevin arguing. Okay, you've convicted me of a crime, but you should go easier on me because I have these neurological problems.

So this is Nita Farahani. Professor of Law and Philosophy and Professor of Genome. scientists and policy at Duke University. She's been following this whole sort of emerging field of neuro law for quite a while, and back in 2006, it occurred to her. Okay, lots of people are interested in this field, but nobody has any good

data. So I started counting cases to try to see... To try to see how many times does brain science come up in court. Now, the only data that she'd get her hands on were written opinions, which turns out doesn't happen that often. Like, really only happens in like 1%

of court cases. But... But in that 1% of cases, she saw a steady increase and, you know, relatively dramatic. You have a couple of years, 2005 and 6, and about 100 cases, 2007, 8, 9, 200-some cases. And then 11, 12, you're in the 300s. All told. Between 2005 and 2012, it's about 1,600 cases. But 1,600 cases that are kind of like the Kevin case, where someone maybe argues, look, It's not entirely my fault.

My brain made me do it. At least a little bit. Yeah. And by the way, that number was just in the 1% she had access to. So the other 99% of cases may actually have a whole lot more. Yep. Well, wait a second. Is this a new development?

What do you mean? Like, you know, in West Side Story, there's this character, Officer Crumkey, and he goes, and there's these juvenile delinquents. This is back in the 50s. And they're saying everything is someone else's fault. So they have bad parents. And they have poverty and they have passion and they have youth and they plead all these things. Kindly, Sergeant Kruppke, you got to understand.

It's just our bring an upkey that gets us out of hand. Our mother's all a junkies. Our father's all are drunk. If you just added to the list, tumor, that's pretty much the same thing. Well, maybe. No. There seems to be something more compelling for both judges and juries when you are able to have actual brain scans. You know, or EEG or whatever, because now you can say to Officer Crump, you look, I know this might sound like an excuse, but check out this spot right here.

Here's the proof. I don't have a normal brain, you know, and I didn't choose not to have a normal brain, so how can it be completely my fault? Well, doesn't that sound a little bit like a little too easy? Maybe. I mean, I guess it depends on the specific case, but just in the abstract, let me give you the best version that I've ever heard of this argument. Okay. This is what made me really stop and think. It comes from a psychologist Kevin Dutton.

He was interviewed on the Scientific American podcast, and he gave this hypothetical. Imagine if you've got a deaf person, okay, and you've got a child in a burning building, and you've got that child screaming out, but the deaf person can't hear the screams. So you wouldn't necessarily blame. You wouldn't hold that deaf person culpable for that child's death if the child died. You agree so far? Yes. By the same token, if you are emotionally deaf, if you can feel,

physically hear the screams, but emotionally you just don't have that kind of neural kick up the backside to go in and save that child. Isn't that the same thing? And when you start thinking about that, there's a whole kind of moral conundrum that starts coming out of that, because damage to the ear is damaged to a physical structure, damage to the brain is also damaged to a physical structure. So here's the moral conundrum I think he's referring to. If we go along with this idea that we can use brain abnormalities to defend ourselves,

in court. Well, that's going to lead us into some pretty weird places. As a society, things may get very, very complicated. As we learned, we got into a little tussle. All right. With this guy. Sorry, so you put this on. That is a little chilly in here. This is David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist. He's a regular on our show. Is that what I'm supposed to say or now? Very spirited regular. Yeah. No, here's one of the most interesting parts. Here's his argument. Think about it technologically at the moment. Our best technologies in neuroscience are very crude. We can see when someone has a tumor or damage from traumatic brain injury or neurodegenerative disease, but it is quite crude still. The way he puts it, looking for those

brain abnormalities now, is sort of like being up in space and looking down at the earth. You can't really see what's going on down there, but you can see the big shapes and the colors, and every so often, you notice something that's not supposed to be there. Like, whoa, what is that crater over there? If you see something that's big enough to see, you take a picture, back in court, you show it to the judge, and maybe she gives the guy a break. But then, say you're up there and... You don't see anything. Well, then back in court, the judge is going to take a look at your apparently normal brain and say, sorry. Well, that's your fault. It's not a biological problem.

So we're just going to say you're blameworthy. So that's where we are now. We draw the line at what we can see, and what we can see is only the big stuff. But... He says, imagine forward. We'll have new technologies. We'll have XMRI instead of FMRI. And suddenly it's going to be like Google Maps,

where instead of being up in space, you can... You can zoom in, and now you can see everything. We'll have new names for disorders of the microcircuitry and so on. We'll certainly never get all the way to the end. But one day, we may be able to say, like, see that little bit of mangled wiring right over there? That is because his mom didn't love him enough.

Or maybe he got bullied. Like, we'll be able to see all that stuff, almost as well as we can see brain tumors now. Because there is nothing special about brain tumors except for their visibility. Really what he's saying when you get down to it, his core belief is that you are your biology. Which is on some level kind of like whatever, duh, but he takes it much farther. He says that almost everything that you go through in your life. All of your experiences.

Your culture, your history, your neighborhood, all of it is etched into the tissue of your brain. There's nothing separate. Nothing. Descartes famously suggested you've got the body, you know, the physical stuff, and then you've got this extra bit, the soul, the ghost in the machine. But sort of the, you know, the inside word on that neuroscience is that, no, no, no. It's all the same thing.

And now that we're beginning to see that, he says, actually see it. We are on a slippery slope. Because if you start letting people off the hook when you see a tumor, well, then you're going to have to keep letting them off the hook when you see something smaller. Or smaller still. Or smaller still. The point is, it cannot be a just legal system that in one decade says,

well, you're blameworthy. Because for the moment, we can't see anything in your brain. And then the next decade says, oh, you have Schmedley's disease. Hey, we can see it now. And we didn't realize that. So now we're lumping you over here with the people with the brain tumors.

So what does that mean? Like, we have to let everybody off the hook? No, no. Blameworthiness is the wrong question for a legal system to ask. That's the point is that this whole notion about blameworthiness and saying, okay, if we have a biological mitigator,

then we'll bring that up in court and we'll say, well, it's not exactly his fault. And if we don't have a biological mitigator, we'll say it is his fault. The reason none of this makes sense nowadays is because saying, was it the person's fault or was it something about his biology, doesn't make sense as a question.

They are inseparable. I have a version of that question. How about everybody should know that his brain isn't completely normal in this regard, and now the question is proportion. How much do you want to put on the brain and how much do you want to put on his... On what else is there?

Behavior... Which comes from where? ...ability to choose from the brain is choosy part of his brain as opposed to his unchewy part. Well, that's okay. That's where you're forcing me. I'm glad you're phrasing it this way

because that's exactly the problem with our intuitions. We have this intuition that, yeah, your brain might look like this. You have these genes. You have these experiences. That makes your biology like this. Oh, but in the end, that doesn't matter

because you've got this other thing that's independent of the biology. but we don't. You are your brain. Your brain, however, nevertheless, helps you decide things. Brains help you choose. So the question I'm asking. Who's the you that they're helping?

Who's the you that you're helping? The bearer of the brain, the owner of the brain. And that's separate from the brain? Oh, God. Do you own it? I do you keep doing this to me. I know that if I have a tootsie roll in front of me in an M&M, I can choose the M&M. So I assume my brain is doing something.

And the question I want to ask is like, how much am I choosing and how much am I really outside of choosing? because something irregular in my brain is choosing for me. And that seems to me to be a way to do it. So this, but this is fascinating because the way you're phrasing, it suggests that there's, there's you, and then there's your brain, and there's things in your brain that might be telling you what you don't want to do. But it's all one system is the thing.

So when you're faced with the tootsie roll versus the whatever else, Eminem. M&M, everything in your life leading up to that moment from your genetic history written on invisibly small strands of nucleic acids all the way up to every experience you've ever had leads to that choice. What would it even mean to make a choice completely independent of your brain? Okay, wait, I'd like to... One more time.

I promise I won't... What about, like, the Ten Commandments? Those are like the... Okay, I'm just going to jump over a second. At this point, things kind of slid off the rails. We end up talking about the Ten Commandments, debating the question of free will. If free will exists at all, it's a really small part. We went back and forth about whether you can overcome your upbringing, which obviously you can.

Oh gosh, no you can't. Sure you can. No, you can't. I can go to the library and I can read. That's only if you're that type of person. Anyhow, after an hour, we finally got back around to David's main point, which is that the legal system would be a hell of a lot better off, he says. If we forgot about blame altogether, forget if it's someone's fault, that's a dead end, he would say. The better way to do it, he thinks, is to focus on this.

This. Probability of future recidivism. You mean like, will they do it again? That's right. That's exactly it. Well, how would you ever know? Here's how. You crunch the numbers. So this has already happened in the world of sex offenders where there have been long-term studies following out. Here's the way it already works, he says, which he thinks his model. When a sex offender comes up for parole, someone at the corrections office will grab their record and ask a bunch of questions.

What was the victim choice? Was it somebody they knew or was it somebody outside of their family? Was it a minor? Was the victim male or female? Was it somebody their age? What was the crime type? All these different questions. Then the evaluator will take some of the answers and give them points. Three, zero, two, one.

That's psychologist Amy Phoenix. She says researchers developed this point system based on years of studies of criminal behavior, massive amounts of data. And once you have all these points down... You can add up a total score. And that score is supposed to tell you, is this guy likely to do it again or not? And here's the bottom line. Amy says, if you were to ask a parole officer with decades of experience to just use their gut, no numbers.

We call that unguided clinical judgment. If you were to ask them for their unguided but expert clinical judgment. Well, Fred here, recidivate or not? What's your prediction? According to studies, those experts are correct? About 50% of the time. So you may as well flip a coin. On the other hand, she says if you have people just use the point system, no gut involved. The predictive accuracy would be about 70%. Wow, 70%

No humans involved Yeah But here's the thing that sort of gives me pause Like in order to get that accurate You kind of have to turn people Into data, you know Yeah Into types

I know it seems like Oh, where's the humanity in that? But the question we have to ask is Compared to what? So the way it currently goes Ugly people get much longer sentences than attractive people in courts This is a well-known bias from juries

is that somehow better than having a scientifically informed legal system? Hmm. I have no response to that. I, damn it. Well. Robert will. Yes. Yes.

It's okay that pretty people get better sentences than ugly people. What? Because, I don't know. I'm going out on the limit and see what happens when I finish the sentence. All right. Go. Because what we're just. describing here is humans judging humans, not tables judging humans, not data judging humans,

but humans judging humans. So humans do that with a certain amount of humanness, and maybe it's not very rational, and maybe sometimes it's wrong-headed or unfair. But if you take the judgment away from the humans and you give it to a table, then you invite a different set of problems, which is the chance for mercy, which is a very big part of justice is off the table because statistics don't have mercy. They just have statistics. Amen. That was nicely done. Roberts, please do that. But let me say, let me say a beautiful question.

That is a beautiful question. So the notion of we should be merciful and so on. Of course, that's all true. But the question is, are we good at it? Are we good at knowing who is the right person to be merciful with? It ends up usually being the attractive person, right? And the person who's ugly and his missing teeth we're usually not as merciful for. All right, let me just throw in one more objection to this. I mean, obviously he has a point. I guess so. But this whole thing

that he's advocating for, and he's not the only one, of throwing out blame, focusing instead on what someone might do. Is that a world you would want to really live in? Need a fair honey that law professor put it this way. Imagine you do something small. So if I, you know, forge a check.

Minor offense. And in the process of arresting me and convicting me... Maybe the courts do a brain scan. Or they do that number crunchy thing. Exactly. And they determine actually she has a predilection for far more serious crimes than check-forging. I mean, she hasn't done any of those things yet, but she could rob a bank. She could commit a violent crime.

That's what the data shows. If all you're worried about is what she might do... Then you can keep me in prison forever because what you've discovered is that I pose a real and future danger to society. I mean, you could basically convict someone of a crime that hasn't happened yet. Exactly. And not only that, if you think about this whole thing from a slightly higher altitude, according to Nita, when you blame somebody for something, there's a power to that act that goes beyond that one individual. There is value to society holding people morally accountable for wrongdoing. You're upholding this code that is important to all of us.

It's what we've lived by and clung to for thousands of years. So you could argue that the act of assigning blame is sort of like reinforcing the scaffolding of society. It creates norms for people to follow. That makes perfect sense to me. Otherwise, we would be, well, we would be like, I don't know what we'd be. So hey, so you're coming out for the Ten Commandments at the end of the day. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on.

No, let's just say he went there and he can't take it back. Don't draft me onto that team. This is Julia calling from Washington, D.C. Radio Lab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Three to one, hey, I'm Chad Aboumran. I'm Robert Krollwitch. And today on Radio Lab, Blaine.

All right. Tell me your name again. Bianca. Bianca. Yeah. That's a pretty name. Thank you. Yeah.

Okay. So this is tape that was sent to us. by a radio producer named Bianca Gave her. At the time, she was in college just starting out, biking across the country. So, yeah, we just got this grant to bicycle around this summer. No kidding. Yeah, it's called Davis Projects for Peace. Oh, great.

And she was riding through this part of Tennessee and ended up on this farm-type place where she met this guy, Hector. My name is Hector Black, almost 86 and a half. When you get as old as I am, you add the halves again like you did. You were three. And Hector ended up telling Bianca a story that in many ways turns everything we've learned in this hour on its head. So, yeah, where would be the best place to start?

I mean, I think the story starts when he decided to move to Atlanta because that's where Patricia was, his daughter. He had fought in the war. As a combat engineer. World War II. I was not a good soldier. Went to Harvard, got a degree, met his wife, Susie. and then...

I did join the civil rights work in the 60s. I think when Hector heard about the civil rights movement, he actually packed up his bags, moved to the neighborhood where Martin Luther King lived. We rented a house. And said, what can I do to help? I felt I wouldn't really understand what was going on unless I lived there. And that's when he meets Patricia.

Girl in the neighborhood who came over all the time, just like a lot of kids, but she stuck around longer than anyone else. And at 11 years old, she asked them, will you adopt me? Why do you explain, did you adopt Patricia? What happened? Yeah, her mom was an alcoholic. Sometimes she drank up the rent money. And the kids were out on the street with their mom and dad.

Mom, there was no dad. And so we took them in. She was very shy. She had impotigo sores on her legs. In a nappy-headed, her mama never braided her hair. She was just really a neglected child. and so she just blossomed. She got into reading, sewing, painting.

She made all her own clothes. She was making bridal gowns as a second source of income. And then she went off to college, she came back, and started teaching kids to read. She even took in a few kids, just like he had done. Adopted a couple of kids? Yeah.

She was a wonderful child. So unfortunately, the whole story changes now in November of 2000, because that's when Patricia... Oh, God. was murdered. Ivan Simpson is the name of the man who killed her. He'd broken into her house, looking for money.

And he strangled her. And later the autopsy showed he sexually assaulted her too. At first, you know, I yelled, I'll kill the bastard. You know, I thought what kind of a monster would do a thing like this? And he said for almost a year, he could not stop imagining. What he had done to her? These visions that come at me out of the blue just hit me again and again.

I just had no control. It was like he had control over me, pushing my face in the mud. After Ivan had confessed, and this was right after the murder, Hector said part of him did want Ivan to get the death penalty. I was furious. But then this other part of him was like,

no, this is a test. This was a test of his principal of his beliefs. And so he decided he would not pursue the death penalty. At the trial where he was sentenced. He refused to look at Ivan. Trisha's cousin got up first. She was just in tears and just said how much she hated him.

I thought, oh, Lord, I'm going to go say something that's probably going to hurt her feelings. When it came his turn... I had a written statement because I wasn't sure how steady my voice was going to be. but I was saying how much we love Patricia, how much she meant to us, and how wounded we were by what had happened. And I said, I don't know if I've forgiven you, Ivan Simpson, but I don't hate you.

I hate with all my soul what you did to my daughter. And then he worked up the nerve to turn around. To face him, to say the last thing I had written. And that I wish for all of us who have been so wounded by this crime, I wish that we might find God's peace. And I wish that also for you, Ivan Simpson. And he says, when he looked up, tears were streaming down his cheeks.

And, you know, that's the first time I looked into his eyes, and it was like a soul in hell. I was just undescribable, looking at them. In the end, Ivan ended up. getting life in prison without parole. What happens next was so surprising and troubling to us, frankly, that we sent Bianca, and our producer, Andy Mills, back down to Tennessee to talk to Hector again. Okay, so it's the night after the trial.

Hector is laying in bed. In the Mattel, I couldn't sleep that night. And he kept thinking about that moment in the courtroom. I've never had a look like that my whole life. Never before or since. Over and over and over. And finally he just gets up, he grabs a pen and paper,

and he starts writing. Dear Ivan, Christopher Simpson, I am writing because I wanted you to know how I feel after the court hearing Monday. When I turned around while I was reading my statement and looked at you, it was a very powerful moment for me.

When you raised your tear-stained face to look at me, ever since this happened, I have been trying to find something good in all the horror and pain. I have tried to be a better person. And then he writes this line, maybe as a way to push himself to be that better person, but he writes, I forgive you.

For what you did to our beloved daughter. I don't know if this will be of any comfort to you, but I wanted to tell you. We will both have to live our lives with the pain of this deed always there. But Patricia tried to make the world a better place. We should also try. Did you think he would write you back after that? I didn't know.

But about four weeks later, a letter shows up. This is it. Dear Mr. Hector, Black, and family, I first want to say, God bless you all in all things. Second, I have to go straight to the point. I know God has forgiven me. You have forgiven me, but I can't forgive myself. Not yet anyway. I have so much anger at myself right now, it's unbelievable. This hardness I have against myself. I will always be remorseful. I used to hear God speak to me all the time, but I guess after what I did, he took away his touch from me. Right now, I miss his voice.

I don't know the level of love Miss Patricia had, but if it's anything like your example of it, it is great. God comfort you all in everything. Feel free to ask me

anything you like. If I can, I will try to answer it. Dear Ivan, I was very glad to have your letter. I think it is important that we be as honest as possible. with one another.

And so I have to tell you that it is hard for me to write to you. I wanted to know who he was. I would really like to hear about your life, about the people who loved you, the people who hurt you. Because I wanted to know what had happened to him

that could make it possible for him to do a thing like this. Ivan writes, Dear Hector, I was adopted when I was two days old. His mother was schizophrenic. Mrs. Simpson, the one I called, call mom now, took me in. He was raised by his grandmother's sister. She's 82 now. I used to have to stay

over there with my natural mom, while Marie, my mom now, had to work. My natural mom used to beat me. Blurt out, I'm glad I got rid of you. When he was a little boy, maybe about 11 or so, she took him and his younger brother and his little sister to a swimming pool and she tried to drown all three. One sister died. He stood there well. She drowned his little sister in front of him. It's just the most horrible stuff. And so we asked him

having heard all this from Ivan, did he still blame Ivan? Or did he blame his mom or society or something else? Well, I do blame him. I mean, he made the choices. He made the choices. There's no doubt about that. But he says

knowing this also made him want to write back. Dear Ivan. And tell Ivan about his life. I grew up in New York City. His family. Two brothers. My parents argued and fought a lot. Basically, his whole life story.

I've always loved working with plants. And after we left Vine City and moved back to the country. And Ivan wrote back. Dear Hector, I was raised in the church, but after starting drugs and alcohol, I changed. Hector responded. Dear Ivan, I don't think God has a back. You abandoned you. Dear Hector, you're the only one writing to me now.

We exchanged many, many letters. And at some point in this back and forth, this almost incomprehensible thing happens. Dear Hector, their letters... First of all, thank you for the pictures. I never knew plum trees blossom, really. Just become casual. My favorite bloom is the water lily blossom.

They'd talk about flowers. It's beautiful. Things they'd read. Dear Ivan, thanks for you. your letters. I've been closing a story someone sent to be because I thought you would enjoy it. And sometimes... Dear Hector. Just the most mundane details of their day. Just sitting around this Saturday evening, been singing him as to myself. Basically, they became friends.

You know, Hector, you're right. I do sense a bond developing unusual because of the circumstances. It's not at all... what I expected to happen, you know. And it's just so absolutely crazy. You actually, oh gosh, we started to send him Christmas packages, and we see this box on the floor and I think to myself, you crazy old man, you're sending Christmas packages

for the man who murdered your daughter. What the hell is up with you? Just so cross, so totally out of, I was out of orbit or something. And I guess I was because people don't do that. Maybe I'm trying to exact meaning from it. I don't know. Because I struggled so hard with why. Eventually, after years of writing letters,

Hector decided to ask that why question in its most essential form. What happened that night? This one, I just want you to know, if you don't want to read this, we don't want to make you read this if you're not ready. I don't think it's... This might be a good time to say that this next part is disturbing.

If you have kids or you're just not in the mood, now's a good time to duck out for a few minutes. Dear Hector, I wasn't, going to tell you all what happened until you asked. I'm also glad you're relieving me of details also. God bless you. I went into the house around 7.30 p.m. I'm used to breaking into place in the past, so I figured the house was total dark, so I broke out a whole window and climbed in. I took the VCR and TV and clock. I figured that was enough. went and got $80 worth of drugs.

I'm a heavy user, so it went in about one hour. So he made his way back to Trish's house. It was still dark, so I went back in. He found his way into the bedroom. I saw a computer and stereo. So I said, I take it, and that should last for the night. But I got trapped when I saw a car. So I hid until I could get back out the way I came.

So I saw a lady walk to the room. I tried to be quiet so I could escape. When she opened the door to a closet, I was hiding. As she stepped back, she fell. I told her I was going to tie her up, so I would have time to get away. She said, okay, sir. Her glasses fell off, and at no time she saw my face. So I told her I was going to take the car so I could load it up.

She gave me the keys, so I told her after I found out her name, I said, Patricia, I know you're scared, but I will be out of here in about 15 minutes. Then she said, you should get help with your drug problem. I told her I tried in the past, but I restarted. Yeah, that's Trish. She had no compunctions about telling people off when they were in the wrong. And then I said, I'm sorry for this.

I'm going to leave your car in the shopping center up the street next to the Chinese restaurant. because all I need the car for was to transport the items I had. And even though Trish was tied up around her hands, she went into the kitchen and warmed up some chicken and rolls for Ivan. Then I said, I'm sorry, and I left again. I got rid of the things, got about $200, well, $100 drugs, and $100 cash. Then I said, well, I just parked the car at the end of the driveway.

Then I couldn't wait. I pulled over and smoked some of the crack cocaine. And at this point he's really high. And he explained that when he gets this high, he sometimes hears a male voice in his head. And as he was walking away, the voice said to him, he said, well, go get you some sex. I told him, leave me alone,

but next thing I know, I'm walking back to her house. No police had come. He burst through the door, ran to where Patricia was tied up, and said, Did you have any money cash? She said, look in my purse. And then Ivan said that the voice in his head became his own voice. And he said to her, I want some sex.

She said, sir, you've been so nice. Why, don't do that. He said, only were you going to do this if I'm dead. Okay, then, and it happened. He strangled her, sexually assaulted her. Then he ran away. Around 2 a.m., I ran out of drugs. He said that after he finished getting high, he started to wonder if he had dreamt it all up.

So he made one last trip back to Patricia's house. So I looked up at the house, no police, and gates still open. So when I peeps through the door, she was still laying there. So I said, Patricia, Patricia. And then the voice in his head told him to go back in one more time. He sexually assaulted her. I couldn't believe what happened. So went to my mom.

His adopted mother. And I said, Mama, it's something wrong. Mama, something wrong. She said, child, tell me what you're talking about. I couldn't tell her. I was really hoping they would kill me in the electric chair because I shouldn't be able to live with myself and God after what I had done.

I just don't know why I had to do it. Was it because of the idea? in the money. No. Getting caught later on in life. No. Control or power? No. Car. No. Because she saw my face. No. She didn't see me at no time. Fingerprints left on something? No. I just don't understand why I did it. While I feel the pressure has left me for telling you first what happened. My mom doesn't even know. I've been keeping all this inside and it hurts so. I'm truly sorrowful for what happened. May God bless you all, sincerely, Ivan.

Did it help in any way to know? Yes. I mean, that sounded exactly like Trish. But she was a really fearless. I mean, she must have been a kind of imagine what a horrible. Oh, God. I was just amazed that she could be so strong. Just amazed. Because when you love somebody very much, you want to know about their last hours. And he just wrote it in a way that I found very kind. I mean, if kind is a weird word to put there,

But that's the word he chose. Kind. After that letter, are they still write? Yeah, they still write. They've been writing for 10 years now, and Hector has just folders and stacks of these papers in his basement. It's the only room in his house that he keeps locked. Producer Bianca Gaver,

thanks also to our own Andy Mills. And thanks to you for listening. Hi, it's David Eagleman. This is Bianca Gabor. This is Dr. Amy Phoenix. Okay, this is Hector Black Calling, reading out that text. Here's the text that you sent me. Radio Lab is produced by...

By Jack. Got Eben Rod. Our staff includes Ellen Horn. Shoren Wheeler. Matt Walter. Tim Howard. Renniferall. Molly Webster.

Melissa O'Donnell. Dylan Keith. And Andy Mills. With help from Theeep. Bennett. Derek Clements. And Trisley. Inrananey.

Special banks to Steve. Merski. Jay Allison. Michael May. And Jesse Bering. I guess that's it. Bye. End of message.