LONDON, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Criminal psychopaths in the
United States whose lawyers provide biological evidence for
their brain condition are more likely to be sentenced to shorter
jail terms than those who are simply said to be psychopaths,
according to new research.
A study published in the journal Science found that if
judges were told a criminal was a psychopath, they considered it
an aggravating factor. But if they also heard biological
explanations for the disorder, they gave shorter sentences.
Researchers from the University of Utah who conducted the
study said the findings were surprising and worrying, and
external experts said they had problematic implications for how
brain science might affect criminal justice in future.
"In the coming years, we are likely to find out about all
kinds of biological causes of criminal behaviour, so the
question is, why does the law care if most behaviour is
biologically caused?" said Teneille Brown, an associate
professor at the university's college of law.
Seena Fazel, a clinical senior lecturer in forensic
psychiatry at Britain's Oxford University, noted there are
already known biological bases for many disorders criminals
suffer from, including drug abuse, alcoholism and antisocial
personality disorder.
"So if psychopathy reduces your sentence because it has a
biological basis, why shouldn't these other more common
conditions also result in reduced sentences?" he said.
MITIGATING FACTOR
The Utah team carried out a survey of 181 judges in 19 U.S.
states who were given a hypothetical case of aggravated battery
to consider. They found that when judges were given a
"biomechanical" explanation for a criminal's psychopathy, they
saw this as a mitigating factor and reduced the sentence, on
average by about a year.
"Judges that heard information about the genetic and
developmental causes of psychopathy gave significantly shorter
sentences," said Lisa Aspinwall, a psychologist who worked with
Brown on the study.
Brown said what was "so striking" about these results in
psychopaths was that it was likely there may be even sharper
reductions in sentences for defendants with more sympathetic
diagnoses such as mental retardation or schizophrenia.
Several studies in recent years have found that psychopaths
who have committed serious crimes like murder and rape have
faulty connections in their brains which show up on functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans.
These and other advances in neuroscience have led some to
worry that such scientific evidence may be used increasingly in
court to explain criminal actions or argue mitigating
circumstances.
BREIVIK'S SENTENCE
In a report earlier this year by Britain's national academy
of science, the Royal Society, leading scientists and lawyers
advised extreme caution on the use of brain scans and genetic
data in court.
Interest in the minds of violent criminals has also been
sharpened by the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred
77 people in Norway in July 2011, in which the prosecution
argued Breivik was insane. If judges agree, he will go to a
mental institution instead of a prison.
The verdict in his trial is due to be announced on Aug 24.
Brown and her colleagues said their study raised ethical
questions: Whether it was right to reduce a criminal's sentence
because defective genes or brain function meant he had less
self-control and ability to tell right from wrong. Or whether
such evidence should be an argument for a harsher sentence
because the criminal may be more likely to reoffend.
The study's results showed that judges who were given a
biological explanation for a convict's psychopathy imposed
sentences averaging 12.83 years - about a year less than the
13.93-year average imposed by judges who were only told the
defendant was a psychopath.
Even though a year is a relatively small reduction, Brown
said she was "amazed the sentence was reduced at all given that
we're dealing with psychopaths, who are very unsympathetic".
Fazel said he would be very concerned about the reliability
in legal terms of the idea of psychopathy. The condition is not
currently in diagnostic classification systems, he said, and two
separate experts may come to very different conclusions about
whether or a not a criminal is psychopathic.
"If a condition or disorder is going to be used to mitigate
sentence length, it should have high levels of reliability, as
found with severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia," he said.
(Editing by Ben Hirschler and Pravin Char)