Brain damage, especially Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), is found in many condemned prisoners.

Psychologists, and other forensic experts, tend to miss or give insufficient weight to FASD.

The tragic case of Christa Pike, whose execution was recently botched, illustrates this problem.

In 2013, I penned a post for Psychology Today titled “A Foolish and Barbaric Practice: Seven Reasons to Oppose Capital Punishment.” The seven reasons I cited were: (1) unequal administration (die in Phoenix, live in Tucson; die if poor or have bad lawyers, live if rich or have good ones), (2) tremendous cost of litigation, (3) many post-conviction exonerations, (4) lack of evidence that it deters murder, (5) myth that it provides closure for victims’ families, (6) cruelty of being in a condemned state for years or decades and (7) change in moral consensus (many states have abolished capital punishment, and almost no other first-world nation still allows it).

At that time, I was in the process of moving from Colorado to California, but was able to get my post placed on the desk of Governor (today Senator) John Hickenlooper, who was considering whether or not to support a Bill that would bring Colorado (which had actually abolished it in 1900 but then brought it back a few years later) onto the growing list of states that have abolished capital punishment. Afterwards, Hickenlooper announced that he would not sign death warrants for any of the three prisoners at that time on Colorado’s death row and listed most of my seven reasons.

Both before and after I published my post, I served as a forensic expert in many death penalty proceedings, typically over the question of possible Intellectual Disability (ID, formerly known as Mental Retardation). As a result of my experience with people accused or convicted of murder,........

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