The Volokh Conspiracy - Brain Scanner Evidence Used for Conviction in India:

The International Herald Tribune reports:

[W]ell before any consensus on the technology's readiness, India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine: a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question....

[I]n June, in a murder case in Pune, in Maharashtra State, ... a judge explicitly cited a scan as proof that the suspect's brain held "experiential knowledge" about the crime that only the killer could possess, sentencing her to life in prison.

Psychologists and neuroscientists in the United States, which has been at the forefront of brain-based lie detection, variously called India's application of the technology to legal cases "fascinating," "ridiculous," "chilling" and "unconscionable." ...

"I find this both interesting and disturbing," Henry Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford Law School, said of the Indian verdict. "We keep looking for a magic, technological solution to lie detection. Maybe we'll have it someday, but we need to demand the highest standards of proof before we ruin people's lives based on its application." ...

"Technologies which are neither seriously peer-reviewed nor independently replicated are not, in my opinion, credible," said [J. Peter] Rosenfeld, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Northwestern University and one of the early developers of electroencephalogram-based lie detection[, speaking of the particular approach used in the Indian case -EV]. "The fact that an advanced and sophisticated democratic society such as India would actually convict persons based on an unproven technology is even more incredible." ...

Thanks to GeekPress for the pointer.

	[Eugene Volokh, September 16, 2008 at 12:54pm] Trackbacks Brain Scanner Evidence Used for Conviction in India: The International Herald Tribune reports: [W]ell before any consensus on the technology's readiness, India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine: a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question.... [I]n June, in a murder case in Pune, in Maharashtra State, ... a judge explicitly cited a scan as proof that the suspect's brain held "experiential knowledge" about the crime that only the killer could possess, sentencing her to life in prison. Psychologists and neuroscientists in the United States, which has been at the forefront of brain-based lie detection, variously called India's application of the technology to legal cases "fascinating," "ridiculous," "chilling" and "unconscionable." ... "I find this both interesting and disturbing," Henry Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford Law School, said of the Indian verdict. "We keep looking for a magic, technological solution to lie detection. Maybe we'll have it someday, but we need to demand the highest standards of proof before we ruin people's lives based on its application." ... "Technologies which are neither seriously peer-reviewed nor independently replicated are not, in my opinion, credible," said [J. Peter] Rosenfeld, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Northwestern University and one of the early developers of electroencephalogram-based lie detection[, speaking of the particular approach used in the Indian case -EV]. "The fact that an advanced and sophisticated democratic society such as India would actually convict persons based on an unproven technology is even more incredible." ... Thanks to GeekPress for the pointer.