Was Robin Williams Brain Injured?

I don’t want to dwell on this, but there’s been so much noise about this latest celebrity suicide I thought there should at least be some discussion, somewhere, that might be worthwhile.  At least for some people.

It’s just my opinion, of course – although it is perhaps a bit more informed than most – but I believe that any person who exhibits symptoms of  psychological or psychiatric disturbance should be neurologically evaluated for brain injury.

Brain injuries, as we are learning from things like former NFL players who commit suicide for no apparent reason, are extremely common.  Extremely.  Very extremely.  In fact, in my opinion a significant percentage of the people reading this post have at least some limited form of brain injury.  I may have a brain injury without knowing it, and so might you.  These are scary thoughts in a way, but it’s the truth.

What happens to people with brain injuries?  Well, read a pretty good summary here.  Compare the kinds of problems brain injured people have with problems associated with various kinds of mental illness.  There’s a good deal of overlap that can be discerned immediately, but things like depression, mania, lack of impulse control, Parkinson’s should jump right out at you.

Greenfield put up a good post about mental illness in relation to the Robin Williams suicide.  But nobody that I know of has mentioned the possibile role of an undiagnosed and unknown brain injury in many aspects of Robin Williams’ personality, including his suicide.

One reason I think it’s important to mention this is that in recent years some promising treatments for brain disorders have been developed, in particular neurofeedback therapy, where it’s possible that the brain can be re-trained to function better essentially through playing a kind of video game.   This is, of course, non-invasive and non-pharmacological. 

People might not be so tempted to make harsh moral judgments, as has apparently happened surrounding Robin Williams’ death, if they realized not just that there might have been psychological or psychiatric issues, but physical brain issues over which no one has any control.

 

Shepard’s Off The Wall ‘Warning’ Re: Mooney v. Holohan, 294 US 103 (1935)

With apologies, probably only lawyers will really understand this post.  Nevertheless, on to it.

Shepard’s is this service that’s been around for a log time helping lawyers to find cases (usually published opinions from appellate courts) dealing with a specific subject, where those cases have been cited by other cases, whether the citations are favorable or unfavorable – and very importantly, whether a case has been overruled and is no longer good law.

In recent years of course all these functions have been computerized and data-based and Shepard’s is primarily an online tool.

So recently I was checking Shepard’s for any recent developments relating to a case that’s been pretty important fodder for discussion around here for quite some time:  Mooney v. Holohan, 294 US 103 (1935).  That’s a US Supreme Court case.

And Shepards contains a warning that Mooney has been “abrogated”.  The warning then directs the reader by hyperlink to an unpublished opinion from a case in an intermediate state appeals court in Arizona – State v. Branch, decided April 17th of this year.

This unpublished opinion maintains that while under Mooney the prosecution’s knowing use of perjured or false testimony in a criminal case is a denial of due process, Mooney has been qualified to include a “materiality standard”:  that is, there is only a denial of due process of law when the perjury or false testimony affected the outcome of a criminal trial.

Two things about this.  First, it’s not true.  Mooney has never been limited or qualified, and we can hope never will be. 

But second, how can Shepard’s issue a “warning”, complete with the red stop sign symbol, that a US Supreme Court case has been “abrogated” by an unpublished opinion from an intermediate appellate court in Arizona?  State intermediate appellate courts don’t have the authority to limit or abrogate US Supreme Court precedents. 

Who is running things over there at Shepard’s?