Teen Brains on Trial: Law, Adolescence and Neurosciece

Recently, NPR’s Morning Edition, ran a story about use of neuroscience and brain scans in court.  Such evidence has been most effective in criminal trial involving adolescents, who scientists explain have brains that are not fully developed.  

Here is a description of the segment:  

It’s not just people who go on trial these days. It’s their brains.

 

More and more lawyers are arguing that some defendants deserve special consideration because they have brains that are immature or impaired, says Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University who has been studying the use of brain science in court.

 

About 5 percent of murder trials now involve some neuroscience, Farahany says. “There’s a steady increase of defendants seeking to introduce neuroscience to try to reduce the extent to which they’re responsible or the extent to which they’re punished for a crime,” she says.

 

Farahany was a featured speaker at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego this week. Also featured were several brain scientists who are uncomfortable with the way courts are using brain research.

 

When lawyers turn to neuroscience, often what’s at issue is a defendant’s competency, Farahany says. So a defense lawyer might argue that “you weren’t competent to have pled guilty because of some sort of brain injury,” she says, or that you weren’t competent to have confessed to a police officer after being arrested.

The approach has been most successful with cases involving teenagers, Farahany says. . . .