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Minimizing Belief in Free Will May Lessen Support for Criminal Punishment
Exposure to information that diminishes free will, including brain-based accounts of behavior, seems to decrease people’s support for retributive punishment, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Are Death Row Inmates Innocent If They Refuse a Last Meal?
Pacific Standard: In May 2007, Philip Workman, soon to be executed by the state of Tennessee for murdering a police officer, was asked what he wanted for his final meal. Workman, who claimed he had
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The Case Against Brain Scans As Evidence In Court
NPR: It’s not just people who go on trial these days. It’s their brains. More and more lawyers are arguing that some defendants deserve special consideration because they have brains that are immature or impaired
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The Limits of Memory for Witnesses of Crime
Pacific Standard: Armed robbery. Bank hold-ups. Sleight-of-hand shoplifting. While not all of these crimes are violent, what they all have in common is the sudden, stressful position they can often put eyewitnesses and victims in—namely
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The Two Faces of Shame
The Huffington Post: Twenty-four-year-old Shawn Gementera was caught red-handed pilfering letters from private mailboxes along San Francisco’s Fulton Street. Mail theft is a serious crime, and it was not Gementera’s first run-in with the law.
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Forensic experts ‘biased towards side which pays them’
The Telegraph: Although forensic experts are meant to be completely impartial when giving an expert opinion to the jury, they tend to favour the side which employs them. A study found that while the experts
