Here is an interesting article on the study of neuroscience criminal defense.
Criminal courts in the United States are facing a surge in the number
of defense attorneys arguing that their clients’ brains are to blame for their
crimes.
Nita Farahany, a law professor who sits on Barack Obama’s bioethics
advisory panel, recently told a Society for Neuroscience meeting that those on
trial are mounting sophisticated defense strategies that draw on neurological
evidence, in an effort to show they are not fully responsible for murders or
other criminal actions.
Criminal defense lawyers typically draw on brain scans and
neuropsychological tests to reduce defendants’ sentences, but in a substantial
number of cases, the neurological evidence was used to try to clear defendants
of all culpability.
Evidence submitted to the U.S. courts ranged from accounts of head
injuries to apparent structural or functional abnormalities picked up by brain
scans. Defense attorneys argue that these abnormalities affected defendants’
behaviors by making them more violent, more impulsive or incapable of planning
a crime. Some defendants have escaped
death sentences on the basis of neurological evidence. Others have complained
of poor legal assistance when their lawyers failed to have them tested for
brain impairments.
To read more about this fascinating defense strategy and the science
behind it, click on the following link:
Criminal courts in the United States are facing a surge in the number
of defense attorneys arguing that their clients’ brains are to blame for their
crimes.
Nita Farahany, a law professor who sits on Barack Obama’s bioethics
advisory panel, recently told a Society for Neuroscience meeting that those on
trial are mounting sophisticated defense strategies that draw on neurological
evidence, in an effort to show they are not fully responsible for murders or
other criminal actions.
Criminal defense lawyers typically draw on brain scans and
neuropsychological tests to reduce defendants’ sentences, but in a substantial
number of cases, the neurological evidence was used to try to clear defendants
of all culpability.
Evidence submitted to the U.S. courts ranged from accounts of head
injuries to apparent structural or functional abnormalities picked up by brain
scans. Defense attorneys argue that these abnormalities affected defendants’
behaviors by making them more violent, more impulsive or incapable of planning
a crime. Some defendants have escaped
death sentences on the basis of neurological evidence. Others have complained
of poor legal assistance when their lawyers failed to have them tested for
brain impairments.
To read more about this fascinating defense strategy and the science
behind it, click on the following link:
