Courtroom First: Brain Scan Used in Murder Sentencing
Alexis Madrigal writes in Wired:
A defendant’s fMRI brain scan has been used in court for what is believed to be the first time.
Brain scan evidence that the defense claimed shows the defendant’s brain was psychopathic was allowed into the sentencing portion of a murder trial in Chicago, Science reported Monday. Brian Dugan, who had been convicted of the rape and murder of a 10-year-old, was sentenced to death, despite the fMRI scans.
“I don’t know of any other cases where fMRI was used in that context,” Stanford professor Hank Greely told Science.
While the possibility of using fMRI data in a variety of contexts, particularly lie detection, has bounced around the margins of the legal system for years, there are almost no documented cases of its actual use. In the 2005 case Roper v.…
