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Brains create behavior. Yet we hold people, not brains, morally and legally responsible for their actions. Under what conditions could – or should – brain disorder affect the way which we assign moral and legal responsibility to a person? 

In this conversation among a neuroscientist who studies moral judgment, a forensic psychiatrist, and a law professor, we explored three cases that highlight the relationship between brain disorder, law-breaking, and norms relating to responsibility. Continue reading »

By Alysia Santo | The Marshall Project | March 18, 2015

Doctors tell Ronald he is schizophrenic, but he doesn’t believe them. For the past few weeks, he’s been an inmate and patient on the 19th floor of Bellevue Hospital, where mentally ill prisoners, mostly from Rikers Island, are held in a ward called the forensic unit.

Just down the hall from the forensic unit is a small courtroom, where Ronald (name changed to maintain patient privacy) appeared on a recent Tuesday in his light-blue hospital pajamas and slippers, his hands and feet cuffed. This is not the court where Ronald will be tried for the felony he’s facing, if indeed he ever gets to trial. The issue here — the only issue in Room 19E2 — is whether the mentally ill can be treated against their will. Ronald was refusing to take medication, so Bellevue applied to the court to administer antipsychotic drugs over his objection. “I used to have a mental illness in the past, but not anymore,” Ronald insisted to Judge Arthur Engoron, who was tasked with deciding between the patient and the hospital. Continue reading »

By Sarah Kaplan | The Washington Post | March 18, 2015

In 1974, two months after having a portion of his brain removed due to an accident at the sawmill where worked, Cecil Clayton checked himself into a mental hospital, frightened by his suddenly uncontrollable temper.

Previously, Clayton had been an intelligent, guitar-playing family man, relatives said. He abstained from alcohol, worked part time as a pastor and paid weekly visits to a local nursing home.

But after the accident, which necessitated the removal of 20 percent of his frontal lobe, everything changed.

“He broke up with his wife, began drinking alcohol and became impatient, unable to work and more prone to violent outbursts,” Clayton’s brother Marvin testified at trial.

In 1979, he visited William Clary, a doctor who examined him for extreme anxiety, depression and paranoia.

“I can’t get ahold of myself, I’m all tore up,” Clayton told the doctor, according to court filings from his attorneys.

Clayton’s spiraling mental state and increasingly violent behavior came to a head in 1996, when he shot and killed Christopher Castetter, a sheriff’s deputy responding to a domestic disturbance between Clayton and his girlfriend. Clayton was eventually convicted of murder, and executed via lethal injection in Bonne Terre, Mo., Tuesday night. Continue reading »

AP | CBS News | 18 March 2015

BONNE TERRE, Mo. – A Missouri death row inmate has been executed for the shooting death of a sheriff’s deputy, after the U.S. Supreme Court and the state’s governor declined to spare the 74-year-old who attorneys said had a diminished mental capacity because of a brain injury.

Cecil Clayton was put to death Tuesday by lethal injection after Gov. Jay Nixon denied a clemency request and the nation’s highest court turned aside appeals claiming Clayton was mentally incompetent. The Missouri Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling, already had declined to intervene, with the court’s majority concluding last weekend there was no evidence Clayton wasn’t capable of understanding his circumstances. The U.S. Supreme Court was also divided, with four judges saying they would have granted a stay. Continue reading »

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Do criminal penalties have any deterrent effect on drug addicts – people who already are willing to throw away their jobs, relationships, or even lives for their “fix”?  What does brain science tell us about addicts’ capacities to exert self control and to be held criminally responsible?

On Wednesday, March 4, 2015, a leading neuroscientist of addiction, Joshua Buckholtz, a criminal law scholar, Amanda Pustilnik, and a former judge, Hon. Nancy Gertner, discussed whether the law should reconsider aspects of responsibility and punishment in light of new science about self-control.

The event was held from 12-1pm at Wasserstein Hall at Harvard Law School. Continue reading »