All posts tagged "Braindamage"

Sean was a 44-year old former salesman, church volunteer and father of two whose severe neurological disorder left him wasting away, unable to speak or care for himself. Half Sean’s age, Markeith Loyd Jr. was an accused carjacker and son of a convicted cop killer, who had cold-cocked a nurse in the face at a hospital for criminal defendants. His severe mental illness left him prone to outbursts of rage. When they were assigned rooms on opposite sides of the hall at a North Florida state psychiatric hospital, that decision would eventually lead to Sean’s death. It also would spawn five lawsuits......

Last year, after a searing Miami Herald investigation of a Florida program created to provide health care for children who suffered catastrophic brain injuries at birth, Charlie Lydecker resigned under fire as board chairman of the Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association. Few expressed regret at seeing Lydecker — and his colleagues on the board and the executive director — depart as part of a sweeping makeover. Those who considered the changes appropriate included Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who said bluntly: “NICA has got to do better.” Lydecker is bac......

MIAMI — Over a decade ago, a “brain-mapping” technology known as QEEG was first used in a Florida death penalty case, helping keep a convicted Miami killer off death row by swaying jurors that brain damage had left him prone to violence. In the years since, brain mapping remains very much a legal gray area, inconsistently accepted in a small number of death penalty cases across the state. In some, prosecutors fought it as junk science and judges agreed to block results. In others, prosecutors raised no objections to the tests. The questions surrounding brain mapping will soon be on trial again......