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How Experts Have Dominated The Neuroscience Narrative In Criminal Cases For Twelve Decades: A Warning For The Future, Deborah W. Denno
How Experts Have Dominated The Neuroscience Narrative In Criminal Cases For Twelve Decades: A Warning For The Future, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
Phineas Gage, the man who survived impalement by a rod through his head in 1848, is considered “one of the great medical curiosities of all time.” While expert accounts of Gage's post-accident personality changes are often wildly damning and distorted, recent research shows that Gage mostly thrived, despite his trauma. Studying past cases such as Gage’s helps us imagine—and prepare for—a future of law and neuroscience in which scientific debates over the brain’s functions remain fiery, and experts divisively control how we characterize brain-injured defendants.
This Article examines how experts have long dominated the neuroscience narrative in U.S. criminal cases, …
The Myth Of The Double- Edged Sword: An Empirical Study Of Neuroscience Evidence In Criminal Cases, Deborah W. Denno
The Myth Of The Double- Edged Sword: An Empirical Study Of Neuroscience Evidence In Criminal Cases, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
This Article presents the results of my unique study of 800 criminal cases addressing neuroscience evidence over the past two decades (1992–2012). Many legal scholars have theorized about the impact of neuroscience evidence on the criminal law, but this is the first empirical study of its kind to systematically investigate how courts assess the mitigating and aggravating strength of such evidence. My analysis reveals that neuroscience evidence is usually offered to mitigate punishments in the way that traditional criminal law has always allowed, especially in the penalty phase of death penalty trials. This finding controverts the popular image of neuroscience …
Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, And The Criminal Justice System, Deborah W. Denno
Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, And The Criminal Justice System, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.