Law Commons^™

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 …