Neuroscientific Evidence in the Courtroom

On September 26^th Deborah Denno and Dr. Rubin Gur gave talks that I have been waiting to hear since my junior year of high school. That was the year I wrote a paper for my AP Language class about the “insanity defense.” It was accompanied by an impassioned class presentation, verging on a rant, which left a few of my classmates thinking I might be a good candidate for the defense. Four and half years later, with an almost completed psych degree under my proverbial belt, I still strongly believe that mentally ill offenders should have the opportunity to be sentenced to treatment instead of straight prison time. It’s simply the most productive, not to mention the most humane, way to deal with these offenders.  That’s why it made me so glad to hear evidence of the growing prevalence, reliability, and shift in attitude toward neuroscientific evidence in the courtroom. While it’s obvious that there is still a ways to go, Denno and Gur gave me hope that both the quality of neuroscientific and psychological evidence as well as the degree to which it is used and trusted will only continue to improve.

Despite my background with the subject, a few points of the talks were extremely eye opening. For instance, while I had often thought about the necessity of taking mental illness into account in court, I had never given much thought to what the evidence to support it might look like. Luckily, we had Dr.Gur to take us through how he would present to a courtroom. And he’s certainly a reliable source given his years of experience. Having gone into the talks relatively blind, I was blown away upon learning that he helped mount the initial insanity defense for the Unabomber. After seeing his sample evidence, it’s easy to understand why people might be skeptical about neuroscientific testimony.  It would take a lot of explanation to get a jury of laypeople to understand the implications of highly technical graphs and images, and surely not every expert witness is as skilled as Gur.  That fact brings to mind one of the arguments against neuroscientific evidence that Denno mentioned: that such evidence might awe juries into a certain decision. After seeing example evidence, and this is speaking as a neuroscience minor, it seems that juries would be more likely confused into disbelief than awed into agreement.

Despite the confusing nature of neuroscientific testimony, especially for juries of laypeople, the quality of evidence that was presented gives me renewed faith in its usefulness. Furthermore, the talks pointed out that technology, and therefore the evidence produced by it, will only continue to improve as time goes on. Hopefully as time goes on people like Gur and Denno can continue to convince the world that when it comes to behavior a person IS their brain, and that brains should certainly be taken into account when talking about criminal behavior.