2. Increasingly, lawyers use brain images to defend their clients in court

(Meixner, 2015; Teitcher, 2011; Bonnie & Scott, 2013; Farah, 2010). In three recent court cases, juries deciding whether a convicted killer should receive the death penalty were provided (by the defendant’s attorneys) PET scans, MRIs, and fMRIs of the killer’s brain. In each case, experts explained that those images illustrated a variety of abnormalities involving parts of the brain such as the frontal lobe, amygdala, cerebellum, and corpus callosum, among others. In two cases, the jury decided against the death penalty. In one, the jury decided for the death penalty (Miller, 2013). If you were on the jury, how much impact would brain scan evidence have on you? Would it matter if the crime was murder or something less serious? Would it matter if you were determining guilt or sentencing someone who had already been found guilty?