Neuroscience Evidence in the Courtroom

Neuroscience evidence in the courtroom is becoming more and more common.  This is leading to apprehension on the part of both  neuroscientists and law professionals.  What is the hesitation for neuroscience evidence being used?  Dr. Deborah Denno has conducted research attempting to answer this question.

Some may suggest that neuroscience evidence will allow men or women who are a danger to society the ability to walk free as innocent because they are found mentally unfit and cannot be tried fairly.  This is a reasonable fear for anybody to have.  However, Dr. Denno has found this to be overwhelmingly false.  It is just one of the many unfounded fears of neuroscience evidence in the courtroom.  Neuroscience evidence is used most often for the mitigation of a sentence rather than for proving innocence or guilt.  Mitigation is simply lessening the sentence, usually from the death sentence to a lifetime sentence.  Denno also found that in only 50% of these cases was the evidence even accepted, yet facts such as, "his mother loves him" were acceptable.  This exemplifies Denno's main point throughout her talk.  There are many "unfounded fears" about neuroscience evidence in the courtroom.  Those in opposition have talked about brain scans creating a "Christmas tree" effect for the jurors, yet a bloodied t-shirt demonstrating the severity of an attack is allowed.

Those in opposition to neuroscience evidence suggest a scan such as this may be too "impressive-looking" for jurors and awe them into submission.  

What all of this unfounded fear does, argues Denno, is take attention away from flaws in other evidence used in the courtroom.  Eye-witness testimony, for example, is very unreliable, yet is commonly used in the courtroom.  Denno argues that we must move forward and move past these unfounded fears and create a way for neuroscience evidence to become accepted in the courtroom.

One way for this to happen may be fore those in both fields to learn more about the other, and for both to see how neuroscience evidence is applied.  Dr. Ruben Gur's talk explained how neuroscience evidence is commonly presented in the court of law.  Dr. Gur used his presentation as he would had he been presenting in a courtroom, with much less time to operate of course.  PET scans and MRI scans were presented. Dr. Gur referred to many trials he had been apart of, such as the infamous Ted Kaczynski.  He explained how he diagnosed the patients with schizophrenia or other neurological disorders in a simple manner and showed scans that supported his claims.  None of his presentation seemed like it would have a "Christmas tree" effect or that it would "wow" anyone into submission.  In some cases, he explained, defendants did not want to use the evidence themselves because they didn't believe it or were ashamed.  Gur's presentation was easy to follow, understand and convincing.  It seems hard to believe this type of a presentation would not be allowed in the courtroom, yet it is what many people fear.

After listening to both of these speakers I would have to agree with Denno's ending statement.  Both fields need to come together and attempt to move past these "unfounded fears" and bring neuroscience evidence unhampered into the court of law.