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Mental health

Selected Works

Criminal Law

Selected Works

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Humane Punishment For Seriously Disordered Offenders: Sentencing Departures And Judicial Control Over Conditions Of Confinement, E. Lea Johnston Oct 2014

Humane Punishment For Seriously Disordered Offenders: Sentencing Departures And Judicial Control Over Conditions Of Confinement, E. Lea Johnston

E. Lea Johnston

At sentencing, a judge may foresee that an individual with a major mental disorder will experience serious psychological or physical harm in prison. In light of this reality and offenders’ other potential vulnerabilities, a number of jurisdictions currently allow judges to treat undue offender hardship as a mitigating factor at sentencing. In these jurisdictions, vulnerability to harm may militate toward an order of probation or a reduced term of confinement. Since these measures do not affect offenders’ day-to-day experience in confinement, these expressions of mitigation fail to protect adequately those vulnerable offenders who must serve time in prison. This Article …

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Empathy For Psychopaths: Using Fmri Brain Scans To Plea For Leniency In Death Penalty Cases, Kimberly D. Phillips Dec 2012

Empathy For Psychopaths: Using Fmri Brain Scans To Plea For Leniency In Death Penalty Cases, Kimberly D. Phillips

Kimberly D Phillips

Most of the public agrees that society is safer without psychopaths.
However, a new sentencing strategy for psychopaths facing the death
penalty has erupted from both mental health researchers and defense
lawyers-imploring juries to view a defendant's psychopathy as a
consideration of sentencing mitigation, and, consequently, urging juries to
impose life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.

This article explains the frightening nature of psychopaths, how
neuroscience and neuroimaging intersects with the study of psychopathy,
and, specifically, whether an fiMRI brain scan is appropriate mitigating
evidence in death penalty sentencing hearings when the convicted
defendant is a diagnosed psychopath.

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