Neuroscience in the Court of Law

             The Neuroscience in Criminal Law and Policy Colloquium offered many examples of how neuroscience can and has been used in the court of law. The first person to speak was Dr. Ruben Gur, a professor at University of Pennsylvania.  His talk, “Neuroscience in the Courtroom: To Early, To Late, or Just in Time” was very informative even for people with very little knowledge of neuroscience. This is because he began with a basic biology lesson, explaining the topics that would be covered. What stood out to me was Dr. Gur’s work with Ted Kaczynski, more commonly known as the “Unabomber”. Kaczynski was responsible for many horrible bombings across the country. Dr. Gur, along with his wife Dr. Raquel Gur diagnosed Kaczynski with schizophrenia. They were able to diagnose him by using many scientific approaches ranging from clinical psychology to diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Upon hearing his diagnosis, Kaczynski fired Dr. Gur and his legal team. He was eventually sentenced to life in prison. Dr. Gur brought up an interesting point throughout his talk. The death penalty is used to punish someone to the fullest extent of the law. If someone is incapable of processing normal human thought, should they be punished to this fullest extent? Dr. Deborah Denno, who spoke later, was able to shed some light on this question.

Dr. Denno represented the law side of this talk. Dr. Denno noted how neuroscience evidence is used mainly during the “penalty phase” of the trial, not the “guilt phase”. In other words, neuroscience evidence is not commonly used to get somebody “off the hook”. This is how neuroscience was used in Kaczynski’s trial. Dr. Denno exhibits strong support for neuroscience in the courtroom and believes that within the next ten years, neuroscience will be used as heavily as DNA. I look forward to seeing if her prediction is correct. Neuroscience in general is a quickly growing field, and I believe it can have great affects in the court of law.