Should the police be allowed to impose brain scans on suspects, assuming that brain scans can help proving mens rea?
The English criminal justice system is based upon a “range of decisions and procedures from the investigations and questioning of people” which develop the common sense ideas of free will and responsibility for conduct. Imposing Brain scans on suspects by the police excludes the system from procedures of investigation and questioning, which is known to be justice. Brain scans can be used for the element of the criminal law of mens rea, which is required under the criminal justice system to convict one of crime. However the presumption of innocence and a fair trial would be under threat as one would have been proven guilty by the police before the courts. Thus, this essay argues that police should not be able to impose brain scans on suspects, even if the evidence provided may help prove mens rea.
The implementation of allowing police to use brain scans on suspects, assuming that brain scans help proving mens rea causes an issue with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984. As under the Act in s.34 the right to remain silent in custody is a principle that police officers have to abide by as “the right to silence protects the state from violating a person’s constitutional zone of privacy through interrogation”. Therefore, under this act police officers are not allowed to force a suspect to answer questions. Demonstrating that placing a brain scan on a suspect and measuring their response to questions from the scan would unquestionably be taking the right to remain in silent and under s.78 of the PACE act any evidence which has been obtained unfairly would be excluded in court. Hence, approving that polic...
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...ence Won't Transform Legal System Any Time Soon, Experts Say' (Advance Science Serving Society 7 May 2013) accessed 16 November 2013
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Jon Hamilton , 'The Case Against Brain Scans As Evidence In Court' (NPR 12 November 2013 ) accessed 13 November 2013
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Juarez, M., Kiehl, K., & Calhoun, V. (2013). Intrinsic limbic and paralimbic networks are associated with criminal psychopathy. Human Brain Mapping, 34(8), 1921-1930. doi:10.1002/hbm.22037
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Raine, Adrian, Monte Buchsbaum, and Lori LaCasse. "Brain abnormalities in murderers indicated by positron emission tomography." Biological psychiatry42.6 (1997): 495-508.
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