Brain Scans Used In Murder Sentencing

sciencehabit writes "For what may be the first time, fMRI scans of brain activity have been used as evidence in the sentencing phase of a murder trial. Defense lawyers for an Illinois man convicted of raping and killing a 10-year-old girl used the scans to argue that their client should be spared the death penalty because he has a brain disorder. Some experts say the scans are irrelevant because they were taken 20+ years after the crimes were committed. Others point out that the scans are only being considered because the sentencing phase of a trial has less stringent standards about evidence than those used to establish a defendant's innocence or guilt." In the Illinois case, the fMRI defense didn't help the defendant, whom a jury sentenced to death.

Comments

Great defence!

[Quasar1999]

If anything, it would help the jury decide to sentence him to death... obviously they're helping him by not letting him live, thus his horribly diseased brain won't make him suffer any longer... Really it's the humanitarian thing to do... :P

Re:Great defence!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There are some specific cases where brain abnormality evidence seems like it would be very valuable to the defendant. This guy for instance. Initially pretty normal. Gradually develops increasingly problematic sexual misbehavior. Just before being sent to jail, goes to the ER with a headache and neurological symptoms. They MRI him and chop out a huge tumor pressing on his frontal lobe. Sexual misbehavior stops.

Some time later, it starts up again. They check, and the tumor has partially regrown. Tumor is again resected, and patient is again fine.

In a case like that, there seems to be a compelling argument to be made that the defendant's behavior is a medical problem rather than a criminal one(and a treatable medical problem, not an "well, enjoy the secure ward for the rest of your life" medical problem). If, though, your plea is basically "But, but, this MRI shows exactly the part of my brain that makes me a violent shitbag..." That seems fairly useless to you(though it might be helpful in the long term, if it helps us figure out how to stop producing people like you). Obviously, with sufficient scientific knowledge, it will be possible to identify the anatomic basis of your behavior. So what?

Re:Great defence!

[jamesh]

From a purely scientific point of view it does make some sense. The trouble is that you would be putting people in charge of who gets to breed and who doesn't, and we've already demonstrated that people are not capable of running a bank properly so imagine what's going to happen if you put them in charge of something like this... Once someone in power decides that pointing out flaws in the government is not a good trait to have, it all goes downhill really fast - there doesn't need to be a 'real' gene for it either, once the system is corrupt people can make up whatever they want.

Also, have a look at some of the defects in some of the greatest people of our time. Einstein had a majorly lopsided brain etc. Obviously not necessarily genetic though.

Re:Great defence!

[hairyfeet]

You know, I always thought is was how a person was raised, and not their DNA, that made them who they were, that is, until it happened in my own family.

My two cousins, lets call them Rick and Don, were raised exactly the same way, in fact until Rick turned 16 and everything came out we all thought they were biological brothers. It turned out my Aunt and Uncle had been told when they lived in Texas they couldn't have kids, and therefor adopted Rick at less than a week old, naturally boom a year later Don is born. They were very "all children are gifts from God" and spending many a night in their home and living down the street from them I can attest they never treated either kid differently from the other. But before Rick was even 12 there were problems-torturing animals, stealing, vicious behavior, bullying, etc. Finally they managed to get the court records unsealed and ....damn.

It turned out Rick's mom was a whore who was doing 10-20 for cutting up a John over a fee with a razor, and his dad was her pimp who I swear was a fricking axe murderer! No shit, they guy got into an argument over cash, went to his truck, got an axe and chopped the guy into little pieces and got life without parole. Now Rick is locked up in the same prison where his biological dad died, charged as a habitual offender he most likely will never get out again. My aunt and uncle spent huge sums of money trying to help him, therapy, drugs, etc all to no avail. Don is about as boring as you can get, I don't think he or his wife have ever gotten so much as a traffic ticket.

So I really have to wonder if there is something in the DNA. My aunt looked up his biological family and both sides were nothing but violence-rapes,beatings, killings, etc as far back as she could find.And as I said both boys were raised side by side, same house, food, treatment, etc, in a house filled with love and caring parents. So maybe there is something to the "bad gene" idea, who knows. Maybe we can isolate the genes and hopefully get rid of them. But watching it unfold in my own family killed the whole "it is just the environment they are raised in" BS for me. Because they got Rick straight from the hospital and he had never been exposed to his family, nor would he or any of us even known they existed if things hadn't gone so wrong.

Re:Great defence!

[fractoid]

Is it, though? Now we're getting into the philosophy of punishment. There are three basic motivations that I can see for punishing someone for a crime (as distinct from forcing them to make reparations):

• To reduce the likelihood of re-offending (especially applies to incarceration).
• To serve as an example, to deter others from perpetrating the same offense
• Revenge

Imagine a kiddy fiddler of the worst order. He's molested scores of children, caused untold harm to them, etc. Now imagine that, on the day that he's caught, they can for whatever reason clinically prove that he's 'cured' and would be constitutionally unable to re-offend. Should he go free? I imagine the response would be a universal and emphatic "no, of course not!" The only motive for incarcerating or executing him at this point would be revenge.

Re:Great defence!

[PitaBred]

The unfortunate thing is that he spent 9 months and a week with his biological mother. Who knows what she ate and how much proper nutrition he got while developing, what drugs she did, how well she took care of herself. There's research showing that children start out crying in their native languages, which means they can be affected quite a bit by pre-natal environmental conditions. It's hard to separate DNA from "environment" when you really can't tell what the environment was for a large portion of his quite literally most formative time.

Re:Great defence!

[P0ltergeist333]

Nature vs nurture is an extremely old argument, not likely to be resolved either simply or easily. While I understand the reasoning behind your statements, I believe they falsely assume that your feelings of lust, etc. are exactly the same for you as they they would be for someone with a biological tendency towards such behaviors, and that your reactions to these feelings are exactly the same as someone with a biological tendency towards such behaviors. I believe these are unsupported assumptions and as such contain the fallacy of false cause.

Re:Great defence!

[hairyfeet]

Actually this is one question I know the answer to-It was the early 70s and she spent pretty much all of her pregnancy handcuffed to a bed, since she was in the pen over the whole "cutting the guy's face all to shit" with a razor thing. So she couldn't have been more than a month or so along when she ended up in prison, since of course cutting a guy is a parole violation that tends to get your ass thrown back in pretty quick. From what I understand they gave vitamins and decent food to pregnant women in the joint, or so I have heard. And I don't think she'd be able to score dope too well in a prison maternity ward. He was born in the pen and then taken to the hospital where my aunt got him.

I know all this because my aunt damned near worked herself into the ground trying to find something that would help Rick. She found out everything she possibly could about every single relative of his she could find hoping to find something they could treat, and spent many a night crying on my mom's shoulder. Unfortunately there isn't exactly a treatment for "mean muthafucka" which is pretty much what his biological family was. Wife beaters, killers, hell I bet you could probably go back 100 years with that family tree and not find a single one that wasn't scummy. Sad but true. With Rick there was pretty much ZERO impulse control. I mean none, zip zero zilch. No empathy or remorse either.

So while he may be a member of my family I say the best thing society could do is NEVER let that dude breathe a breath of free air again. Because if you let him out he would be robbing, beating, whatever probably before he even got 20 miles down the road. Maybe study him and try to figure out what in his DNA creates somebody like that, because we sure as hell don't want a bunch of him running loose. But from what I was told there pretty much wasn't a single member of that family without a rap sheet as long as your arm. Really nice bunch, huh?

Re:Great defence!

[big_paul76]

Stephen J. Gould said something about how any evidence that suggests nurture over nature, could usually be used just as well to suggest a nature over nurture.

It turns out that nature vs nurture is a false dichotomy. For example, there have been genes identified in rats that are ONLY turned on by specific maternal behaviors.

So genes matter, but environment is at least as important. Without the environment that "turns on" a gene, nothing happens.

Re:Great defence!

[hairyfeet]

I think I may be able to help you "see" how it might not be as cut and dried as you make it, from an example of one of Rick's earlier "mishaps". One day I got to listen to him and his parents fight (he was about 12 IIRC) over an incident earlier that day. Apparently he had walked around a corner and bumped a neighbor's cat, which had become startled and scratched him. He (very calmly from what I remember) reached down, picked up the neighbor's cat, and bashed its head against a tree in a single blow powerful enough to splatter its brains all over the tree.

Now the "funny" part, which I always remember about the incident, is nobody was ever able to explain why he shouldn't do that in a way he could understand. To him it was very logical, cat scratched him, kill the cat, cat won't scratch him no more. He simply couldn't understand why everyone made a big deal about that, or why he should care that the neighbor loved the cat, or anything of the sort. His mind simply didn't work that way. No empathy, no feelings for others, no concept of how his actions would affect others or have repercussions, no concept at all of these things. It was like trying to explain to an alien what it was like to live as a human being-he could understand the words, but they simply didn't have any meaning to him. You might as well have been speaking German for all he understood.

And THAT is what makes him different from you, me, and a good portion of the planet. You talk about having "self control" but if you simply don't understand WHY you should have self control then really, how good would your self control be? Some call it a soul, some a conscience, whatever it is that makes a person see that other living beings have value and that feelings other than you own at THAT moment have meaning and are just as real, whatever that part was, he just didn't have it. So I don't see how you could say it is a cop out, although I could see how some might try to abuse it, but it really wouldn't be hard to look at a history of someone like Rick and see a pattern. For him the only real person is him. Only his emotions are valid, the concept of caring about how others feel is simply an alien thought process to him.

And finally to show this wasn't some "act" that he used only when it was in his favor, he once flipped a bug convertible and broke his neck. Rather than wait for help he crawled out of the wreck held his head up by pulling his hair with his hand and walked to the dope dealer's house, who had the good sense to call an ambulance. Why did he do that? Because he wanted some dope. It never occurred to him that he could be paralyzed, or that by doing so he was causing damage that ended up with him being in a halo for twice as long as it otherwise would have been, to him crawling out and walking to where the dope was with a broken neck was just as logical as could be. That was just how he brain worked.

Re:Great defence!

[qazsedcft]

What you wrote seems to fit the description of a psychopath pretty well. Actually, the Wikipedia article suggests that there may be genetic factors involved.

Re:Great defence!

[mcgrew]

But that doesn't explain Amy and Tami, who I mentioned in my slashdot journal yesterday. Here's the relevant part (no need to read the whole journal)

The difference between Amy and Tami are striking. Tami's about ten years older than Amy, who was raised under horrible conditions; she was the result of two teenagers tripping on acid in the snow on high school property. She was shuffled from one foster home to another; she's told me some terrible horror stories, which she overcame, went to college and got a nursing degree and license. She lost her license and children after her ex-husband beat her so badly he went to prison for felony assault and she started drinking, and is vainly trying to get off the booze and back to work.

Tami was brought up in a rich family who owned show horses. I've seen photos of her as a teenager riding the horses at state fairs. She went on to become a liar and a thief and a parasite.

Amy's mother is a schitzophrenic homeless drug addict, her biological father died a couple of years ago from MSRA. From what she's said, he was as bad off as her mother. Aside from her alcohol problem and clinical depression, Amy's completely normal.

Capital Punishment

[RichardJenkins]

Sure stops re-offending, not sure about a deterrent effect but I could buy it. I just don't think I have the stomach for it.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Capital punishment can encourage heinous crimes. If a suspect has already committed a crime that warrants capital punishment, then that suspect will have nothing to lose by committing more crimes.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Short of the ability to alter the weather (Texas is a hot, humid, weather oppressive place to live), you're never going to turn Texas into North Dakota.

Re:Capital Punishment

[LordNimon]

If a suspect has already committed a crime that warrants life in prison without parole, then that suspect will have something to lose by committing more crimes.

Re:Capital Punishment

[digitalunity]

I could see that. Bank robbery goes wrong, accidentally kills someone, robber keeps killing because they've already crossed a line they didn't want to cross...

Even if you're wrong, it certainly seems that capital punishment does little to reduce crimes we currently deem worthy of capital punishment.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so outlaw capital punishment. Then we have a new problem.

Life imprisonment can encourage heinous crimes. If a suspect has already committed a crime that warrants life imprisonment, then that suspect will have nothing to lose by committing more crimes.

See where this is going?

I'm not in favor of capital punishment either, but your argument against it is specious.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Shakrai]

Capital punishment can encourage heinous crimes. If a suspect has already committed a crime that warrants capital punishment, then that suspect will have nothing to lose by committing more crimes.

I'm not convinced that most violent criminals are worried about what they have to lose. Take armed robbery for instance. People who hold up convenience stores rarely walk away with more than $100. For that marginal gain they are risking 10 to 20 years of their freedom, more if they used a weapon in the commission of their crime. No sane person could look at the risk to reward ratio of armed robbery and conclude that it's a worthwhile endeavor -- yet people still engage in such behavior.

I don't think the point of prison and/or the death penalty is to deter crime. Clearly neither one is effective at doing so. The point is to extract the debt that is owed to society for such behavior. The only method of payment for such debt is to require that you forfeit some of your limited time on this planet back to society.

In the case of the death penalty, if your crimes are heinous enough (treason, murder, kidnapping and rape should all qualify IMHO) then I don't see any problems with society putting you out of our collective misery. My only issue with the death penalty is the fact that no justice system is 100% perfect, although I'm not convinced that spending your entire life behind bars for a crime that you didn't commit is anymore humane than being executed for it.

Re:Capital Punishment

[MarkvW]

"We wouldn't need capital punishment if we'd lock violent criminals up for the rest of their miserable lives. The vast majority of first-time murderers already had violent criminal records. Seems to me that if we kept them behind bars where they belong that we'd have a much lower murder rate."

Nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense. Arguments like this are made by politicians only for the purpose of attracting stupid people.

It is nonsense because it will never, ever happen. The same people who cry out for prisons and law and order also scream for no new taxes. People will NEVER pay for the long term lockup of violent offenders. Hell, the USA already has one of the highest imprisonment rates among Western countries. The law and order folks will balk when it comes time to settle up the bill for increased imprisonment. It's all pure jive talk.

Get real.

Re:Capital Punishment

[nomadic]

Actually, and I say this as a liberal lawyer who thinks prison should be rehabilitative, there is strong evidence to suggest that the plummeting murder rates in the latter half of the 90s were a result of longer prison sentences of violent offenders.

Re:Capital Punishment

[evanbd]

In the case of the death penalty, if your crimes are heinous enough (treason, murder, kidnapping and rape should all qualify IMHO) then I don't see any problems with society putting you out of our collective misery. My only issue with the death penalty is the fact that no justice system is 100% perfect, although I'm not convinced that spending your entire life behind bars for a crime that you didn't commit is anymore humane than being executed for it.

I tend to agree with you; however, the major reason I oppose the death penalty isn't that it's inhumane; it's that we make mistakes. Given an imperfect justice system (as all are), a life sentence made in error can be partially corrected later if new evidence comes to light. It's rare, but there have been a decent number of life sentences later reversed because of new evidence (in particular DNA evidence).

We owe it to the convicted to acknowledge that, in some cases, we make mistakes.

Re:Capital Punishment

[radtea]

Texas has the second highest population of the US states and North Dakota is the second lowest.

Assuming for some reason that population plays a role in murder rate--which seems a little weird to me--the more reasonable solution would be to break Texas up into lots of little states, if you really think that the number of people who happen to fall inside an accidental political boundary is determinative of the murder rate therein.

If you're going to reify political boundaries in this way you're going to have to explain why the US as a whole doesn't have a higher murder rate than Texas: after all, it has a much higher population.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Locke2005]

Incarceration is not for punishment or revenge; it serves 3 purposes to society:
1) Deterrent
2) Rehabilitation
3) Preventing the criminal from re-offending, at least for the time period they are incarcerated.
Of these, it can only be proven effective at accomplishing the 3rd purpose. People with a high probability of re-offending should be kept locked away indefinitely for the protection of others. Capital punishment is probably cheaper than keeping somebody in jail for the rest of their lives, but risking the execution of even 1 innocent person before they are exonerated is not a risk I'm willing to take. Finally, truly twisted criminals tend to not last very long in prison anyway; they are eventually given the Jeffery Dahlmer treatment where they are left alone with a lifer who hates them while the guards look the other way. Even cold blooded killers have no stomach for someone who rapes and kills little girls, and I probably wouldn't go out of my way to protect them from the rest of the prison population either.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Shakrai]

People will NEVER pay for the long term lockup of violent offenders

Stop spending ~$43,000 per prisoner to house them in Club Fed and revert prison to what it should be: Three square meals and the chance to break big rocks into little rocks. Stop locking up non-violent druggies (you'll note that I was talking about violent crimes in my previous post) and use the free space/money to lock up violent criminals that actually pose a threat to the rest of us.

A shoplifter deserves a shot at rehabilitation. An armed robber does not. Both sought unearned material gain -- but the latter was willing to threaten violence against his fellow human beings in order to obtain it. Once you demonstrate that you are willing to do that then I don't think you deserve to live among the rest of us. You are no better than a rapid dog and deserve to be treated accordingly.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Thinboy00]

-1 Troll != -1 Disagree

Re:Capital Punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is to extract the debt that is owed to society for such behavior.

What in the name of hell is wrong with you? Prison is used for rehabilitation and/or to segregate dangerous elements, not to "extract the debt".

• Prisons don't "extract debt", they COST money*. If it were about "extracting debt", they'd be closer to either paupers' prisons, or like slave camps (and although prisons do have workshops, they aren't turning a net profit - private prisons profit mainly by government contracts).
• We're not barbarians (well, I'm not). Punishing people just to feel better about ourselves reeks of the sort of ignorance common in the middle ages and earlier.
• it's called the Department of CORRECTIONS, not the Department of Extracting Debt.

Now, keep in mind before anyone gets all huffy about how this conflicts with their opinion on death penalty or whatever, this thought is in no way incongruous with the death penalty or life imprisonment or anything like that - remember, segregating dangerous elements and discouraging other criminals** is still a large part of what imprisonment should accomplish. In fact, this stance (which punishment nuts might think of as "weak"/"soft") is actually tougher in cases such as TFA - although he does not deserve punishment (assuming the brain scan can be regarded as accurate), the point is not to punish but to rehabilitate where possible and segregate where it isn't - and therefore this would have the criminal in TFA imprisoned.

*Yes, yes, prisons are managed by the government, and government wastes money like it's going out of fashion, and could never realistically be profitable, blah blah blah.

** You've argued that violent criminals are not deterred by punishment, but it's based an inherently flawed assumption - you cannot measure a negative; vis, you cannot measure how many people MIGHT have committed a crime but for the deterrent. You can compare to other similar jurisdictions opposing stances on the death penalty, but you cannot conclusively conclude that the reason for any differences in crime rate is the death penalty - there are far too many variables.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Thinboy00]

Hell yeah!

Re:Capital Punishment

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Mistakes are an issue(and they aren't just mistakes, some of the "prosecutorial misconduct" that gets pulled is basically judicial murder).

What I would be very interested to see studied, though, is whether getting the death penalty, because of its high profile and controversial nature, actually improves the quality of representation, access to appeals, and the like. The ideal comparison would be between otherwise similar groups of inmates, some of whom got death, and some of whom got life or various long terms.

Does being on death row attract the attention of more useful advocates or greater judicial scrutiny than does a life sentence or very long fixed term?

Re:Capital Punishment

[Artifakt]

The deterrent effect just doesn't happen. Looking at actual death penalty convictions, there's so few cases where the prisoner has shown any ability to imagine what their life might be like a mere six months down the road, they just aren't capable of thinking, "Ten years from now, if I do X, I could end up getting a lethal injection like that guy.".
          I don't see any way we could get the total time from arrest to execution down to six months in our legal system, and do anything remotely like justice. That's bad enough. But when so many of these cases can't even project six months ahead, any reasonable system of trial and punishment has zero deterrence.
        We have a case just finishing up in my area. Multiple defendants tried separately, for two murders with lots of additional nastiness like rape and torture. Going by what the two defendants convicted so far have said in the televised trial footage. if a program had come on the TV showing someone convicted of the exact crime they were planning, and how it took less than a week to get from the trial, to the graphically televised three day execution by slow torture, they would have still done it. You could have a 99.9% conviction rate and rotting heads on spikes on every street corner these idiots walked past, and they still wouldn't believe it was going to eventually happen to them.
        I'm not arguing for or against capital punishment, mind you, not taking a stand either way. I'm just saying a hope of deterrence shouldn't be why anyone decides to favor capital punishment, because the people who get it are just plain too stupid to deter.

Re:Capital Punishment

[my $anity 0]

It is more expensive in our society to dole out capital punishment as opposed to life inprisonment. This is due to the lengths which this drags out the appeals process. In order to be more certain innocent people aren't killed, we spend more to make sure we can kill the guilty. In a society where we don't care about the possibility of innocence, execution costs a bullet. Thankfully, we live in a society that attempts to be free and fair, but this means that capital punishment stops making sense.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Runaway1956]

Anyone who claims that our prisons are rehabilitative are totally out of touch with reality. It is at least as accurate to say that petty criminals who find their way to prison get the opportunity to learn new and better ways of committing crime.

If we ever correct the serious disconnect between the idealists' vision of prison, and the reality of prison, then we MIGHT begin to correct the abortion we have today.

The United States has one of the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world. Those cells are built, and kept filled, more to keep revenue flowing throughout government and society, than to "rehabilitate" anyone. The prison system is so lucrative, private corporations are getting into the act.

Please, just drop the rehab crap. IF rehab is really a part of the prison system, it's so relatively unimportant that we can ignore it.

Re:Capital Punishment

[hazem]

I was just reading Freakonomics and they make the case that part of that decline was also because of Row vs. Wade and the greater availability of abortion. They say the evidence supports the idea that Row vs. Wade made abortion available to women in poverty and that their aborted children were among the group that would have been most likely to become violent criminals. They do quite a few comparisons between states that legalized abortion at different times and other factors to show this.

I'm not sure I accept it, but it's an interesting argument.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Spykk]

You are no better than a rapid dog and deserve to be treated accordingly.

Forced to chase a mechanical bunny around a race track?

Re:Capital Punishment

[shutdown -p now]

There's one more point that just came to my mind, though it is, perhaps, somewhat U.S.-centric, and it may be my wrongful interpretation anyway as I'm not an American. If you start with the concept of inalienable rights, the famous "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", then wouldn't any wrongful execution, being intentional deprivation of a person's life, violate his inalienable right? And therefore, unless you can guarantee with absolute certainty (meaning just that - 100% - not 99.9...%) that executions are never wrongful, death penalty as an institution is inherently in violation of the right to life?

(Yes, I know that the phrase comes from the U.S. Declaration of Independence rather than Constitution, and therefore has no legal force. Nonetheless, if one subscribes to the notion of inalienable rights in the first place, they are inherently above laws.)

Re:Capital Punishment

[mathx314]

Honest question: suppose you're convicted of a crime you didn't commit, with no chance of being exonerated. You get to choose between spending the rest of your life in prison or being executed. Which would you choose? I think that I personally would probably prefer dying over having to spend the rest of my life locked up with actual criminals for a crime I didn't commit.

Re:Capital Punishment

[Opportunist]

It's worse than that, too "hard" punishment for a "minor" crime can push people towards committing worse crimes when the difference in sentence isn't too big. A "three strikes" law in a country without a death penalty would basically mean that you should always kill the witnesses when you've been in jail two times and commit another crime, because you will be sentenced for life if you get caught because it's your third time anyway and murder (sans death penalty) means life anyway.

So why not kill the people you rob? It's only logical to do it, simply to reduce the probability that the police gets a lead.

Re:Capital Punishment

[SEE]

If you start with the concept of inalienable rights, the famous "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", then wouldn't any wrongful execution, being intentional deprivation of a person's life, violate his inalienable right?

Sure. But so would any wrongful imprisonment, being intentional deprivation of a person's liberty, violate his inalienable right. Wrongfully arresting the guy for the crime already is a violation of his inalienable rights by depriving him of his liberty. Demanding 100% perfection before any act that might deny an inalienable right means no law enforcement whatsoever.

(The same type of problem undercuts the often-made "if it's wrong for an individual to do it, it's wrong for the state to do it" argument against the death penalty. Because the logic of that applies just as fully to the fact that it's not allowed for an individual to take somebody prisoner with force or the threat thereof, lock them in restraints, and imprison them behind bars.)

Nature versus Nurture

[reporter]

In the United States, political correctness has concluded that all human behavior (in a "normal" person) is due to nurture and free will. To even hint that human behavior is due, in part, to genetics is taboo: it quickly leads to the conclusion that different races and ethnic groups can have different inclinations. This conclusion is forbidden.

So, brain scans of a criminal defendant will not carry any weight. If his environment (e. g., an abusive childhood) did not cause him to commit the crime, then he must have done it out of his own free will. Since he "freely and deliberately" committed the crime, then he shall be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

That is how American justice works. How does justice work in Europe?

Re:Nature versus Nurture

[CannonballHead]

Let's assume, for a moment, that we have a murderer or rapist that does it because he's genetically wired to do it.

What then? Put him in a "special" place and do genetic "testing" on him? That doesn't sound so nice.

Let him go, because "he couldn't help it" and thus he is not culpable? Hm. That, from a protect-society standpoint, sounds incredibly stupid.

Re:Nature versus Nurture

[gyrogeerloose]

In Canada, we put them out on the ice flows

Funny, that's exactly how the health care system works here in the U.S.

Illinois- Death Penalty Without the Death

[reverseengineer]

I'm curious to see how this will turn out in terms of practice of the death penalty in Illinois. There has been a moratorium on executions since 1999- Illinois still has a "death row," as well as the facilities for lethal injections, but hasn't actually executed prisoners in some time.

Re:OK slashdot.

[Penguinisto]

Err, what if he's thinking about Chewbacca? Might even get him acquitted.

Before we go insane thinking he'll be set free...

[Theaetetus]

... bear in mind that when you get to sentencing for a capital crime, the options are not "death penalty" or "10-20 years with probation and time off for good behavior". Rather, it's "death penalty" or "life without parole".

You may now return to your previously-scheduled flame war.

Personally...

[jd]

I regard the death penalty as somewhat childish and immature. "If X can't be alive, then... then... Neither Can Yoooooo! So nyah!" The idea that it gives closure to anything seemed to get a kick in the nuts with the Beltway Sniper's execution. If you don't get closure when the other person doesn't cry, then I'm not sure it's "closure" you're looking for. Try looking up "schoolyard bully".

I'm also not keen on the way a lot of these trials are handled, especially the insanity stuff. A person being insane doesn't alter whether or not they did something, it merely alters their culpability. That should be obvious.

Ergo, it follows that insanity should not be a plea in the trial phase but confined strictly to that phase which deals with culpability, the sentencing.

However, I also disagree with this idea that there are two options - total all-out criminal insanity and total all-out sanity. For a start, it doesn't leave you with anywhere to put lawyers or politicians.

I would far prefer to see a system in which sanity is regarded as a sliding scale and where sentencing allows the judge to split the time between punishment, treatment and rehabilitation (as and where appropriate) according to what produces the best outcome overall, rather than according to what gives the weenies in the press box a vicarious thrill.

Obviously, if a person is going to be incarcerated forever, then rehabilitation to the point where the person would be safe outside is not terribly useful. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to assume that having them stew, rebel and resent is both less cost-effective and less mature than encouraging them to make effective use of their abilities.

Just because someone is sealed off from society doesn't mean society can't benefit from their mind - there's probably plenty of intellectuals and artists behind bars.

Ian Brady is probably one of the craziest crazies to be in Broadmoor, but his book on the way serial killers think, feel and act should certainly be at least browsed by psychiatrists and detectives for insights no rational mind could ever have produced. No matter how little value it really is, the chances are really good that it'll do more good than the British Police's DNA database and CCTV camera system.

I'd rather let a hundred cold-blooded killers live in jail and receive at least some respect as a person if it meant that just one of those hundred produced a masterpiece of art or a book that had significance than have all hundred die purely for the viewing pleasure of Weekend Warriors.

In a hundred years time, which makes the difference? Something that might only rarely advance humanity - but when it does, advance it a lot - or something that provides a momentary mental orgasm for a bunch of f'ed-up "witnesses" and some losers outside and that's it?

I don't see why I should pay taxes for someone getting off on watching another die, when I could be paying taxes to give those in prison a chance to do something positive and worthwhile.

Re:Personally...

[dissy]

I regard the death penalty as somewhat childish and immature. "If X can't be alive, then... then... Neither Can Yoooooo! So nyah!" The idea that it gives closure to anything seemed to get a kick in the nuts with the Beltway Sniper's execution. If you don't get closure when the other person doesn't cry, then I'm not sure it's "closure" you're looking for. Try looking up "schoolyard bully".

Well at least you fully understand the American justice system.

It is one thing and one thing only: Revenge

If the powers that be, and those that put them in power, even cared in the slightest about justice, stopping crime, and helping people, then our legal system would be turned on its head and look totally different.

Unfortunately this is what most people in America want however. Not justice, just revenge. Not lack of crime, just to create more crime to dish out more suffering. It satisfies both the animal rage instincts as well as gives a false sense of superior morality.

Re:Personally...

[big_paul76]

The best argument on this, especially when talking to the religious right, is biblical.

Matthew 25:34-40.

And Jesus said, For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"And Jesus said to the righteous, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Seriously, even for an atheist like me, that's a powerful argument.

Okay, now just re-focus.

[Fantastic Lad]

I don't care to waste time on the three endless debates being revisited here. (Well, sort of revisited. It's such an old and tired set of problems that nobody here is even giving a full effort). Capital punishment, nature v.s. nurture, and the morality of punishing a natural-born killer.

Don't care. None of that will be solved here or today.

What I AM interested in is the use of medical technology to detect psychopathy in people. We have the technology right now. I want to see a reliable and open system of testing introduced so that we can filter people who are climbing power ladders. -We could have avoided the whole last ten years of bloodshed and economic ruin if we had a simple testing system in place for recognizing psychopaths. What we do with them after this is fodder for those endless debates, and that's fine. History will sort it out. I just think it would be nice if we stopped giving leadership roles to reptiles. You know, so we can stop living in a world where corruption and mass-murder are considered normal? That'd sure be nice.

I want to see this happen. I want to see this happen. I want to see this happen. It's my intention to live in a world where everybody wakes up.

-FL

Re:So, you still have the death penalty...

[Shakrai]

which we also think for your gun-laws

Sorry if our freedom is offensive to you.

The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes

That's a pretty funny signature line for someone that claims to hate American gun-laws. How effective do you suppose the revolution is going to be without weapons in the hands of those who are revolting?

Re:Brian Dugan is scum and deserves to die

[martinX]

I just read about the Jeanine Nicario case. Two men were convicted and sentenced to death for her murder. The murder that Dugan has now confessed to. Although Dugan is obviously the worst scum, the fact that 14 cops, prosecutors and deputies were indicted (They were found not guilty of anything naughty.) and nearly got two innocent men killed by the "Justice System" kind of puts me off the death penalty in general.