Abstract
The development of neuroimaging techniques has enabled us to watch the brain activity of human behavior, and made remarkable progress in neuroscience. The law, as the norm of human behavior, has therefore been challenged by neuroscience. However, the observation of how human behavior ‘is’ produced by brain activity and how ‘ought’ we evaluate this behavior under the law, these are two questions at different levels. Therefore, this thesis aims at reviewing how ‘should’ we cooperate the two things properly and use this in the sentencing phase of death penalty cases in Taiwan. This thesis introduces the basis of neuroimaging techniques and its limitations at first. Then it focus on the neuroimaging studies of Antisocial Personality Disorder and Psychopath individuals, and highlights the findings of structural or functional abnormalities of prefrontal cortex and amygdala and their behaviors. Next, it illustrates the challenges and critics of the neuroscientific findings to free will, criminal responsibility and theories of punishment from United States’ academic perspective, and observes the cases which introduced neuroimages in the capital sentencing phase in U.S. jurisdictions with academic reviews. After analyzing the death penalty cases of the Supreme Court in Taiwan, this thesis concludes that neuroscience and neuroimages can be use in the sentencing phase of death penalty cases on three points: individual responsibility, society’s responsibility, and the possibility of rehabilitation. Only the level of each point being clarify before introducing the neuroscience and neuroimages to mitigate the sentence, can it avoid being infer to the wrong direction.