Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Do Some Murderers Deserve Mercy

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/do-some-murderers-deserve-mercy


Although the topic of criminality and psychological culpability has been churned around many times, this article has kind of a different take on the matter.  The article quickly establishes how and why certain psychopathology and states may be seen by the court system.  As always, the article defines the methods and procedures of pathology:  In this instance we have somnambulism (sleep-walking) and the cliche psychopathy.  Somnambulism is described through the process in which the brain retains the ability to function on the motor level during sleep; however, the prefrontal cortical area remains inhibited which extinguishes the function of efficient decision making.  The depiction of psychopathy is based on a dysfunctional amygdala that strips the individual from an emotional input on any subject (In a side note, research has supported that psychopaths do retain the ability to fear, yet it is greatly diminished due to their intense focus on reinforcing their actions).  Where this article does, in a way, take a turn for the different is when they acknowledge the idea that the jury and judicial system are more likely to find the suspect less culpable when they have inhibited decision making abilities rather than when the suspect is emotionally crippled.  They support this with the case of Brian Dugan, a man being convicted of kidnapping, rape, and murder.  In the case, the defense supported Dugan's psychopathy through the use of fMRI which revealed the brain abnormalities; however, he was still convicted and sentenced to the death penalty.  This case is in direct opposition to the Kenneth Parks case in which the suspect was found to be sleepwalking during the murder of his in-laws.  The verdict in the case was to acquit him of all charges even though his past condemned him to a criminal record and a motive to commit crime.  With all this evidence stacked against him, the court still diminished his culpability due to the lack of executive functioning.  This leads us to ask the question:  Does the mental state really determine the culpability of the suspect, or is it rather how the court perceives the psychopathy?  With these two cases in mind, it is clear that the crime that was based around the idea of emotional control fell in poor favor with the sentiments of the court; whereas, the crime based around executive control fell in good favor.  Could this lead to the conclusion that it does not matter how heinous the crime is, but rather how we appeal to the systems emotions?

2 comments:

  1. Although very unfortunate, I think that it depends on how the courts perceive psychopathy. I say unfortunate because I feel as if though making a decision based upon how the court perceives the situation is extremely objective. I believe that having hard evidence showing that Brian Dugan was obviously suffering from brain abnormalities should have been forgiven in comparison to the leniency given to Kenneth Parks- a man who had basis for a motive to commit the crime. Even if one concludes that it should be more important to decide the future of a suspected criminal based upon hard evidence that indicates psychopathy and not just how the criminal appeals to the system of emotions, will we ever really be able to eliminate the bias of emotions from our judicial system? The rule may be easy to set in place, but much harder to actually implement in action.

    ReplyDelete
  2. One of the major aspects of determining guilt to me in dealing with psychopaths is did they no a difference between right and wrong. The two different cases showed one person, Dugan, who while emotionally compromised most likely knew what he was doing was wrong while Parks had no executive control of his actions thus while actually having a motive for the act he had no control over his decision even if he did know right from wrong.

    ReplyDelete