Forensics Journal - Stevenson University 2012 | Page 11

FORENSICS JOURNAL

Experts continued hypothesizing on the correlation between a social
violation (such as a cruel and pointless murder) and its physical
correlation (such as a generally recognizable flaw in the brain). Now
couched in simplistic terms such as “nature or nurture,” this dispute
underlies the enduring debates about the normal and abnormal. (See
Churchland, 1998; Joseph, 2001; Fischman, 2011; Lindsay, 2012)

Chapter 8, “The Body Speaks,” provides a compelling visit into the
minds and practices of Lacassagne and his assistants. Once having
displaced human speech with the body’s own signs, the investigative
teams formed a radically new concept of the corpse. After a person’s
demise, the body is still host to all sorts of activity. Its temperature,
muscular tissue and skin deterioration all change gradually but at different rates. Lacassagne thus wanted to find a corpse quickly in order
to pinpoint the hour of death. If a corpse was discovered six months
after reported missing, investigators were left to register the gradations
of flies and their larvae that permeated the corpse in order to estimate
the time of death. Asphyxiation was a common cause of death in Lacassagne’s time, so he had to train himself and his students to be able
how to distinguish an accidental drowning from purposeful drowning
or willful strangulation. Parenthetically, early forensics tested their
hypotheses by placing—and killing—dogs in analogous situations.

Today researchers continue to look for the source of criminal predispositions in the circuitry of the brain. While Lacassagne would have
cheerfully embraced the contemporary attention—through science
and public fascination—with the violent tendencies of clever criminals, he also would likely assent to Starr’s closing remarks. Namely, in
trying to find the source for a human monster, we invariably encounter an abyss.
REFERENCES

THE (AB)NORMAL BRAIN

Churchland, P. (1998). Toward a Cognitive Neurobiology of the
Moral Virtues. Topoi, 17, 83-86. Retrieved from http://www.cogsci.
ucsd.edu/~rik/courses/readings/PMChurchland98-neuroMorals.pdf

After describing how the individual paths of Lacassagne and Vacher
eventually converged—and the legal and social circumstances of that
encounter—Starr concludes with a report on a professional and scientific dispute that still lingers. Namely, how can we explain an anomaly
such as the human monster? Or, at least, what should the proper
response be when an otherwise seemingly normal human commits a
monstrous act?

Fischman, J. (2011, June 12). Criminal Minds. The Chronicle Review.
B6-B8.
Foucault, M. (2003). Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1974-1975. New York: Picador.

Looking for an etiological anchor to criminal acts has always been
a central task for legalists, criminologists, politicians, moralists and
sociobiologists. Their findings, if accepted by authorities, could be
used for an array of responses from the proper punishment of the
miscreant to correcting or preventing the predisposition for committing the misdeed. Upon Vacher’s death his brain was dissected
with sections sent to six different experts. To envision these specialists walking home with a section of a serial murderer’s brain offers a
moment of grim humor—what did they dare hope to find?

Joseph, J. (2001). Is Crime in the Genes? A Critical Review of Twin
and Adoption Studies of Criminality and Antisocial Behavior. The
Journal of Mind and Behavior, 22(2), 179-218.
Lindsay, R. (2012, December/January). The Debate Over Enhancements. Free Inquiry, 32(1), 18-21. Retrieved from http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=lindsay_intro_32_1
Starr, D. (2010). The Killer of Little Shepherds: A true crime story and
the birth of forensic science. New York: Knopf.

They quibbled over which sorts of lesions or damaged tissues on
Vacher’s brain were possibly relevant. One expert, focusing on the
section that supposedly controlled speech, asserted this section of
Vacher’s brain was so formidable that he had the potential for public
oratory equal to any current politician or leader.1 Here Lacassagne
and his adherents began challenging the popular expertise of criminologist Cesar Lombroso, who contended that the source of most
social harm could be found in “the born criminal.”

1

Tiryakian, Edward. (1986). Hegemonic Schools. Structures of Knowing. Ed. Richard Monk. University Press of America
*Many thanks to students in INDSC, Spring, 2012—Law/Crime—for their thoughtful
comments and suggestions.

The controversy over Vacher’s brain extended from arcane findings in professional meetings to lively newspaper accounts. One columnist mocked the exchanges with a sarcastic dialogue among imaginary experts, one of whom claims that it is true Vacher disemboweled some innocent shepherds, but analysis of his brain shows that “he would
not have been capable of doing any harm to a fly sitting on the head of one of those shepherds.” This marks an eerie parallel to the movie Psycho, in which Norman Bates,
after slaughtering his mother among others, muses to himself how he could have done such thing when he would not even harm the fly resting upon his nose.

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