Neuroscience, criminal responsibility and sentencing in an islamic country: Iran

Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, and Sentencing

Imagine a defendant who has been charged with murder, the intentional homicide of a victim he was robbing with a weapon. He has a history of three previous convictions and imprisonments for armed robbery. Prior to being released from the third term, he publicly threatened to kill any future armed robbery victims who might be able to identify him. When the current victim looked our armed robber ...

Abolish the Juvenile Court: Youthfulness, Criminal Responsibility, and Sentencing Policy

Impulse control and criminal responsibility: lessons from neuroscience.

Almost all of the world's legal systems recognize the "M'Naghten" exception to criminal responsibility: the inability to appreciate the wrongfulness of action. This exception rests on the assumption that punishment is morally justified only if the defendant was able to choose whether to do wrong. Jurists and jurisdictions differ, however, on whether to extend M'Naghten's logic to cases where th...

On the Relevance of Neuroscience to Criminal Responsibility

Various authors debate the question of whether neuroscience is relevant to criminal responsibility. However, a plethora of different techniques and technologies, each with their own abilities and drawbacks, lurks beneath the label ‘‘neuroscience’’; and in criminal law responsibility is not a single, unitary and generic concept, but it is rather a syndrome of at least six different concepts. Con...

Gender Differences in Criminal Sentencing

Objective. Many studies find that females benefit from their gender in sentencing decisions. Few researchers, however, address whether the gender-sentencing association might be stronger for some crimes, such as minor nonviolent offending, and weaker for other offenses, such as serious violent crime. Method. Using a large random sample of convicted offenders in Texas drawn from a statewide proj...