The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee)

September 7, 2011 Wednesday

Neuroscience causes court headaches

BYLINE: By, Tom Wilemon | The Tennessean

SECTION: NEWS

LENGTH: 579 words

A Jackson psychiatrist sentenced to prison this year for defrauding Medicare said the blood flow in his brain would prove he was telling the truth.
That might sound like a defense strategy that only a psychiatrist could dream up, but questions about neuroscience are increasingly causing courtroom quandaries. The psychiatrist, Dr. Lorne Allan Semrau, has filed an appeal saying that the federal judge in his case erred by refusing to allow evidence from a brain scan that would verify his truthfulness.
This type of scan, a functional MRI for lie detection, and other devices that map out how the brain works are so new that judges are holding up trials to take crash courses in neuroscience. Researchers at Vanderbilt University are seeking to provide guidance on how these novel technologies should be used in courtrooms with the support of a $4.85 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Vanderbilt will manage a research network that also includes professors from 10 other universities.
“One of the things that this research network will be exploring is how to best help the legal system sort the wheat from the chaff,” said Owen Jones, a professor of law and biology at Vanderbilt who is director of the initiative.
The new funding follows a $10 million grant in 2007 from the MacArthur Foundation that launched The Law and Neuroscience Project.
“There are several things percolating out of phase one of the project,” Jones said. “One is a guide for judges in short form. One is a book involving many chapters that can serve as a guide for judges and others. Then several colleagues and I have a book under contract now for the first law school course book about neuroscience coming out with Aspen Publishers.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced this summer that it was launching a dual degree program in neuroscience and law, offering the opportunity to attain a doctorate in neuroscience and a law degree. Vanderbilt also offers such a program.
Skeptics remain
Jeffrey D. Schall, a Vanderbilt psychology professor working with Jones on the initiative, said use of the functional MRI to gauge truthfulness when responding to questions began about five years ago.
A couple of companies, Cephos Corp. and No Lie MRI Inc., already are marketing truth verification services.
“Not everyone believes this works,” Schall said.
Jones spelled it out this way: “It’s not a question as to whether the science is sound. It’s really whether the use of the science in a particular instance is sound.”
Besides ongoing scientific debates, there also are gray areas in the courtroom.
“Under the Fifth Amendment, there’s the right not to self-incriminate, but you’re not free to not give a blood test,” Schall said. “One of the questions that is being debated in the academic literature right now is whether a brain scan under these conditions is like a blood test or is it testifying.”
The functional MRI is one of several neuroscience technologies ending up in courtrooms. Last year, a Florida judge allowed readings from a quantitative electroencephalogram to be introduced during the sentencing phase of Grady Nelson’s trial after he had been convicted of stabbing his wife more than 60 times.
The jury spared him the death penalty.
“Two of the jurors made statements indicating that their opinions on whether or not he should be killed depended crucially on neuroscientific evidence,” Jones said.