The Impulse Problem
Damage and underdevelopment in brain regions like the prefrontal cortex can tremendously impact behavior. What does this mean for responsibility?
We have looked at the insanity defense, targeting mental illnesses where people do not understand the right and wrong of their actions at the time.
What about people who may understand the right and wrong, but lack control of the impulses of their actions?
The Prefrontal Cortex: A Natural Crime Shield
The prefrontal cortex functions as the center of executive function, which includes planning, emotional management, problem solving, and impulse control. It controls moment-to-moment actions and forms human personality. Damage to this region can cause extreme personality changes, often resulting in child-like or underregulated behavior. Youth and adolescents do not have a fully developed PFC until around the age of 25, meaning they do not yet have full impulse control.
Damage or underdevelopment in the PFC is strongly correlated with crime.
But, since tests for “insanity” do not cover prefrontal damage, an alternative called the “Irresistible Impulse” (or “control”) test assesses behavioral control, providing an expanded insanity defense. However, this test is rarely used anymore since many believe existing insanity tests should be sufficient, and that this test counters the law’s vital assumption of free will.
There is also extreme difficulty in diagnosing how irresistible an impulse truly is.
The struggle lies in where to draw the line of “insanity.”
Underdevelopment, brain damage: Enough to Acquit?
Take a look at these cases to see where impulse came into play.
Between a quarter and a third of the roughly 2,500 juveniles sentenced to life without parole in the years before the Miller ruling were convicted of felony murder (murders in which they were not direct the perpetrators).
Sentencing age peaks at 23. Accounting for trial time, the estimated peak age of offense is 22.
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Evan Miller was sentenced to life without parole at the age of 14 after brutally murdering his neighbor. In 2012, the Miller v Alabama supreme court case ruled that LWOP for juveniles is unconstitutional, since children have a “diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change.”
In his re-sentencing hearing, the judge was urged to consider other circumstances from Miller’s past as well, including a history of attempted suicide, foster care, and severe abuse, as well as whether he had shown signs of reform in his first 14 years of incarceration.
Miller’s case has faced much public controversy; the extreme nature of the crime, coupled with his turbulent past and youth, leave people morally baffled.
There have been many cases of youth LWOP in cases far less severe than Evan Miller’s.
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2 in 5 given life without parole were under 26 at the time of their sentence (based on a newly compiled nationally representative dataset of nearly 30,000 individuals sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) between 1995 and 2017.)
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In the case of Donta Page, convicted of the brutal murder of Peyton Tuthill, evidence of his PFC damage was enough to change his death sentence into LWOP. Everyone, including judges, the victim’s family, and the public, was conflicted over this decision, ultimately deciding Page’s specific circumstances (including severe abuse and brain damage) were enough to push his crime below the level of extremity required for death row.
Washington Post “Donta Page: Can Brain Scans Explain Crime?”
Donta Page
Page’s brain (left) shows significantly less PFC activity than a normal brain (right).
Consider…
