"Empathy for Psychopaths: Using fMRI Brain Scans to Plea for Leniency in Death Penalty Cases"

Recently Posted on SSRN (and published in the University of Alabama Law & Psychology Review):

"Empathy for Psychopaths: Using fMRI Brain Scans to Plea for Leniency in Death Penalty Cases"

Most of the public agrees that society is safer without psychopaths. However, a new sentencing strategy for psychopaths facing the death penalty has erupted from both mental health researchers and defense lawyers - imploring juries to view a defendant's psychopathy as a consideration of sentencing mitigation, and, consequently, urging juries to impose life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. This article explains the frightening nature of psychopaths, how neuroscience and neuroimaging intersects with the study of psychopathy, and, specifically, whether an fMRI brain scan is appropriate mitigating evidence in death penalty sentencing hearings when the convicted defendant is a diagnosed psychopath.

Comments

[Michele H]

Very interesting that many think we should not put psychopaths to death and instead fill our prisons with them.

I believe just the opposite. Prisons filled with psychopaths mean nonpsychopaths will be in much more danger, exposing them to much more violence. I believe the answer is sentencing the psychopaths to the death penalty and getting them out of our prisons based on the very evil crimes they have committed for which they have no remorse. In consideration of the same crimes committed, does the psychopath with no empathy get to live while the nonpsychopath who may have remorse must die? That sounds to me like the opposite of justice.