If you've picked criminal trial juries like I have you often spend considerable time trying to plumb the depths of their psyches. You try to find out which ones have prejudices, biases, incapacities to render a fair and impartial verdict. The process is inexact and some of it relies on your own experience as a trial lawyer as well as the information provided about the prospective juror's background. But, beyond that, nothing is certain.
That's why today's Wall St. Journal's Science Journal piece about the role of the brain and how it determines one's opinions about crime and punishment. The Science Journal reported on the ambitious 3-year $10 million project sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundaton to probe how the brain functions and deals with legal concepts as well as an individual's innocence or guilt. The program which is overseen by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in conjunction with neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga, has pooled the talens of 30 brain experts, philosophers and legal scholars to study this phenomenon. Although in its infancy stages, the project published a study conducted at Vanderbilt University. According to the Journal, the researchers, "measured how our brain cells behave as we decide whether to punish someone accused of a crime when we have no personal stake in enforcement. The researchers tested 16 volunteers in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. The fMRI monitored the blood flow and oxygen demand associated with neural activity as each subject made two distinct legal judgments about blame and punishment in 50 hypothetical scenarios ranging from simple theft of a music CD to rape and murder.
No one part of the brain stands in judgment of others, they found. Instead, at least two areas of the brain assess guilt and assign an appropriate penalty. An area associated with analytical reasoning, called the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, became very active, they reported. But the decision process also electrified emotional circuits."
Hopefully, the study will give us better insight into how the human brain determines and weighs certain kinds of behavior, especially behavior that is deemed criminal by our statutes and laws. The more data we have will go along way in providing equity in our justice system. Of course, there are those who worry that such studies undermine the role of free will and accountability for our actions. I don't view this as a serious threat to free will or a person's ability to choose. In sum, it's a step forward that may help lawyers and their clients obtain equal protection under the law.
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