from the article:
Neuroimaging methods can potentially inform the law as to whether someone has the capacity to make knowing and purposeful acts.
Understanding Voluntary Behavior
New York Times
Dr. Beatriz Luna
January 21, 2011
The emergence of neuroscience methods that have the ability to characterize brain behavior have the promise of informing the justice system in issues like the insanity plea. However, these methods have not reached the level of identifying if an individual is a criminal and may never reach that level.
Neuroimaging methods can potentially inform the law as to whether someone has the capacity to make knowing and purposeful acts.
Even if neuroscience could provide some notion of the character of a person, the free will that the law protects may not be identifiable by neurobiological markers alone. Neuroscience can only inform the law about one of the many circumstances that underlie a criminal act. It cannot determine the ultimate culpability of a crime, which is an ethical issue.
Neuroimaging methods can potentially inform the law as to whether someone has the capacity to make knowing and purposeful acts. In cases where a person with a psychiatric disorder commits a crime, it may very well be knowingly and purposeful.
For example, Jared Loughner’s criminal act appears to have involved careful planning that required voluntary and well-thought out steps. However, the aim of this planned behavior may reflect a disordered, diseased state. Neuroimaging studies could show that such a criminal engages brain systems to support voluntary acts in a similar way as the normal population. However they could also show abnormalities in brain processes that support the ability to have empathy and control over anger, or show that reported hallucinations recruit brain processes that support real sensory experiences. Although such a person would be able to operate in a voluntary planned manner, their acts would reflect brain abnormalities that contribute to their urge to commit crimes.
Should such a disorder be an excuse for their voluntary behavior? Probably not, but it might provide extenuating circumstances that could influence sentencing.
One of the frustrations in working as a clinical psychologist is the disparity between the psychological viewpoint(s) and the legal one. For the most part, the statues and case law about mental illness, voluntariness and so on is far behind the research in psychology.
