Is CTE a Defense for Murder? Critical Insights into Violence, Crime and Brain Trauma in Sports

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease that has become closely connected to the "concussion crisis" in contem­porary sports. Its onset is associated with a history of repetitive brain trauma, with many scientific explorations into its effects and risk factors revolving around collision and combat sports, such as American football and boxing. Links between CTE and collision sports intensified following the suicides of several well-known athletes who were diagnosed with CTE post-mortem, including former professional American football players Junior Seau and Dave Duerson and hockey players Wade Belak and Rick Rypien. Media and scientific accounts drew connections between these suicides and patterns of erratic behaviour or mental illness in the lives of these men (Brayton and Helstein 2020). Thus, CTE became more than an embodied outcome of the routine violence of collision sports; it emerged as a potential contributor to acts of violence off the field.