After hearing Dr. Rubin Gur and Deborah Denno speak about
criminology and neuroscience, it made me think: when will it be the norm to
rely on images of the brain to determine a person’s mental capacity when they are
committing a crime? After all, it has been proven that injuries and deficits in
the brain can cause behavioral problems. A famous example of this is Phineas
Gage.
In
the article “Neuroscience Won’t Transform Legal System Any Time Soon, Experts
Say,” we hear from Dr. Steven Hyman. According to Dr. Hyman, the director of
the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of Harvard
and MIT, “We don’t have access to people’s mental states.” For example, if
someone does have some sort of brain lesion that might have been the reason for
him or her to commit a crime, there might be another person out there with the
same lesion who hasn’t committed a crime. Owen D. Jones tells us “Causation
here cannot be assumed.” The mental state of that criminal is a very important
factor. There also may have been other environmental or emotional factors that
may have cause this crime to be committed. There is no way of knowing exactly
what was going through that mind that made them act in this way.
In
relation to the talk we heard, there are several people who should use the
insanity defense and those that truly do have some sort of mental impairment
should be sentenced differently. Not differently in terms of a shorter
sentence, but in a facility where they can get help for their problem. In
Italy, there was a man who got a shorter sentence because he has a low-activity
version of the MAOA gene, which MIGHT cause an increased risk of aggressive
behavior, in combination with other factors. Dr. Hyman tells us that our
behavior cannot be determined by one gene, but by “many genes, brain
development, chance, experience, and the context of actions.” This is the same way that people today
are looking at brain scans to determine the mental stability of a defendant.
Therefore,
we as a society will probably eventually get to the point where brain scans are
a legitimate form of proof, but it may be a long road until that happens. Until
then, the current methods will have to do.
Lane, E. (2013, May 7). Neuroscience won't transform
legal system any time soon,
experts say. Retrieved from http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2013/0507_neuroscience.sht
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