The public reaction to OJ Simpson’s recent sentencing of nine years in prison, seemed to be one of complacent relief. From the news media to the general public, many seemed to share a distinctively dismissive feeling that, finally, justice had been served. For many, the images of OJ back in the courtroom summoned up dusty yet dramatic memories of the 1995 trial for the murders of OJ’s ex-wife and her lover, which ended in Simpson’s acquittal. For those believing that OJ was guilty of the murders, the fact that he was set free to roam the golf courses of LA was a punishment that surely did not fit the crime.

No, OJ never found the “real killer,” but now that he is behind bars, we the public, can take this chance to sit snugly in our semblance of closure on the OJ case. What ever will we do with all of this spare time and energy?  Well, as many of us have used considerable mental resources weighing the evidence and making judgments of OJ’s past offenses, perhaps we should take some time to contemplate: how is it that our brains make decisions about crime and punishment?

This is a question on the minds of law and neuroscience professors alike, and for the first time they have teamed up to try to understand how the brain processes third party legal decisions. After being presented with the evidence in a case, it is the jury’s duty to decide, “did the defendant commit the crime?” If the jury brings in a guilty verdict, it’s up to the judge to determine, “how should the defendant be punished?” This process is a foundation of our legal system: for a group of people, impartial and unrelated to a given crime, to assign responsibility and to designate a suitable punishment for the offense. It is surely no easy task to integrate diverse information about a crime- the physical evidence, the witness and police testimony, the spin of legal defenders and prosecutors- how does the brain take all of this information and make such complicated judgments?

Researchers of law and neuroscience have joined forces in an attempt to understand the brain on jury duty. In in today’s issue of Neuron a study places subjects in a large brain scanner, called an fMRI or functional magnetic resonance imager, and presents them with crime scenarios. In some of the scenarios the defendant is clearly responsible for the crime. In other cases, while the defendant is likely responsible for the crime, there are mitigating circumstances that make the crime seem justified or excusable. Further, subjects are asked to determine the severity of punishment they would give to the hypothetical defendant in a given scenario- on a scale of zero to nine- zero meaning no punishment, nine meaning the harshest punishment possible. “We were looking for brain activity reflecting how people reason about the differences in the scenarios,” explains Owen Jones, a professor of law and biology who lead this study with the help of his neuroscientist colleague, René Marois, at Vanderbilt University.

“We’ve identified regions that are jointly involved, but separately deployed to make a legal decision,” Owen explains. While analytical areas of the brain, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), were important for determining whether a hypothetical defendant was guilty of a crime, emotional areas of the brain, such as the amygdala, seemed to be important for determining the severity of punishment. Emotions, in this study, appear to play a significant role in the decision to punish, “however, the demands of impartiality often require overriding these impulses in order to produce a reasonable judgment,” argues Johannes Haushofer and Ernst Fehr, a team of scientists asked to comment on this work in Neuron’s preview section. These researchers posit that activity in analytical areas such as DLPFC may work to suppress strong emotional responses in order to aid in decisions that require fair judgment.

For those of us not serving on a jury and having no legal obligation to suppress emotions, it is interesting to contemplate that feeling of relief upon OJ’s recent sentencing. As delayed and indirect as the punishment may have been, in many people’s opinion, it certainly comes closer to matching the severity of Simpson’s past transgressions.

photo credit (not original but its where I got it): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/sep/11/welldonebarnesforstocking