My Brain Is So Wired: Neuroimaging’s Role in Competency Cases Involving Persons with Mental Disabilities

• In Event: Mental Health and Competency Issues in Court

Abstract

Recent attention paid to neuroscience in the criminal process has come on questions of mitigation and competency to be executed, but the potential of such evidence transcends these areas. There has been almost no attention paid to its potential impact on a critical intersection between the criminal trial process and inquiries into mental or psychological status: a defendant’s trial competency. Less than a handful of reported cases consider this question, and it is “under the radar” for most relevant scholarship as well, notwithstanding that (1) this inquiry is, numerically, the most important “disability law” question relevant to criminal law, (2) the costs of these hearings are “staggering,” and (3) the incompetency status in no way admits or presumes factual guilt. It is imperative that the ways in which neuroimaging may influence competency determination be studied and understood. We review legal standards for competency in the context of mental disabilities, then examine what neuroimaging may be able to add to these determinations. We also examine this in the context of therapeutic jurisprudence, discussing whether the introduction of scientifically-based evidence of incompetency will lead to a therapeutic outcome for the defendant, no matter what its usefulness to the court.

Authors

• Michael Louis Perlin, New York Law School / Mental Disability Law & Policy Associates

• Alison Julia Lynch, Disability Rights New York