I wrote a 15 page (ok, 17 page, but some of that includes bibliography) paper for my cogsci course on consciousness, centred on fMRI scans and their application in the law.[0] So articles like this tweak my interest.
I'm of two minds on the "drunken defense". On the one hand, I do think it's possible to be so blotto that you don't know your own name, never mind what you did. On the other hand, what the fellow did was reprehensible and he should be locked away. Clearly he lacks the controls that we ought to expect of our citizens. I don't think second degree murder is the most appropriate crime to convict him with, but I don't know that our legal system has exactly the best way to handle this sort of case anyway.
[0] Summary: fMRI scans are here and they're not going away. I take a generally compatibilist approach to matters of cognition, which is to say I'm too wussy to pick a side. So, I argue that society is pretty much going to have to accept that we don't have as much free will as we think we do, and laws are going to have to change as a result - our concept of mens rea is entirely incorrect.