THE SCOPE OF NEUROSCIENCE IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
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Authors: Khushboo Shah
Keywords: criminal regulation, neuroscience, brain Imaging, scans laws
Abstract: Neuroscience is playing an increasingly important role within the criminal justice system and has been a key impetus for recent seminal changes in case law. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court declared all death penalty sentences for juvenile offenders would be banned. Brain imaging scans established developmental differences in the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala of the adolescent brain to such an extent that the Supreme Court found this showed a greater capacity of reform for juvenile offenders. This research has also had enormous effects for adult offenders in the criminal courts. Brain imaging scans are increasingly used by defendants who attempt to use these scans as a defense to show diminished mental functions for various different types of crimes. For instance, a defendant facing a burglary charge might introduce such images as evidence that the size of his amygdala made him more prone to violent crimes. The paper examines that while scientific developments are progressing at an accelerated rate and these developments can have far-reaching positive effects, appropriate regulation is also simultaneously needed to maintain boundaries on that progress. There are many ethical quandaries from the application of using such information. Firstly, the credibility of these practices has not yet been established. This technology is still in its infancy, and there is not enough substantiated research for such a causation link – that an enlarged amygdala would in fact have made the defendant more prone to the burglary as set forth in the example above. There are also issues with the potential overuse of these scans as well as the misapplication of such private information, as these questions have not been addressed or regulated within the laws of evidence. The research proposes the right balance to strike with the usage of brain scans alongside legal regulation to maintain the proper scope of neuroscience within the criminal justice system.