On Human Nature

In my opinion, one of the reasons that jurors in capital murder cases involving a mother being accused of killing a child sometimes decide on a not guilty verdict even when sound evidence to the contrary is presented may be because of the following psychological conundrum which frustrates and confuses many people when they are attempting to make a good decision about an important issue.

We have many processes in the brain which allow us to make decisions. I'm going to discuss only two of a myriad. We have access to a primitive brain process which relies on instinct and emotion, and also a sophisticated process which relies on reason and logic. The first process, which I'll call the Pbrain, primarily responds to the brain's amygdala, which provides us the capability to quickly react to situations and form opinions and behavioral constructs which facilitate both our survival and our emotional stability. The other process, which I'll call the Lbrain, is located in the prefrontal cortex. It is a slower running process which reacts to the actions and reactions of the amygdala by logically, rationally and systematically analyzing life situations and then deciding the best course of action.

The jurors in a capital murder case involving a mother and child case may become confused by the fact that their Lbrain and Pbrain may be in conflict and thus render them incapable of discerning a rational way to make a reasoned decision. In fact, they may be conflicted by several issues which befuddle them.

As a starter, let's examine one important issue and attempt to explain why there can be a conflict and why the jurors can made the wrong decision because of this conflict.

The Pbrain relies on instincts which we inherit and also on our own personal experiences. When we use our Pbrains, we sometimes fall into the trap of relying on our instincts and disregarding our Lbrains. Let's take this issue of a mother harming her own child. To the Pbrain, it is obvious that a mother will almost never harm her own child. In fact, in most cases, she will willingly give up her own life to save her child. This behavior has not changed significantly since humans began walking on this earth. To the Pbrain, it's a given. Mothers don't harm their children. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. We have seen and heard about child abuse involving a mother and child. It can happen, but, to the Pbrain, this is most unusual. And, in many cases, there may be numerous extenuating circumstances which push the mother to contemplate and sometimes even act on feelings about harming a child. For example, a mother may have been abused herself or she may have been forced or unduly influenced by an authority figure to abuse the child.

And, the issues become murkier still if both the mother and the child are considered, by current cultural standards, to be beautiful and outwardly outgoing and pleasant. Most Pbrains cannot imagine how a beautiful child could be abused. Yes, it does happen, but rarely.

So, many jurors tend to immediately grab on to this hypothesis and not let it go even when evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. They could think that there must be some extenuating circumstances or there must be another explanation for this killing. A beautiful mother just couldn't kill a beautiful and innocent child.

So, if hypothetical scenarios which could be true but are not substantiated are introduced by a defense team, the jurors may immediately grab on to these outlandish scenarios and somehow accept the notion that they could be true.

In fact, they may want those stories to be true because their Lbrains cannot process the technical forensic information presented to them in a manner which they can comprehend and thus allow them to make a logical and reasoned decision. Since they are so conflicted, they may decide to rely on their Pbrains to render a not guilty verdict.

However, they cannot openly articulate that line of thought since they would then have to admit to the world that they could not make a logical decision based on their personal cognitive skill level. Their only recourse is to then rationalize their decision by saying that there was some level of reasonable doubt about how the murder occurred and thus they cannot find the defendant guilty.

This is only one aspect which may create a major conflict between the Lbrain and the Pbrain in jurors' minds. One other major issue is the fact that if the jurors find the defendant guilty, she will be put to death. Their Pbrain tells them that it isn't up to them to decide whether a fellow human being should be killed. The Pbrain focuses on self survival and self preservation and thus attempts to avoid emotional trauma at all costs. The Lbrain may naturally and easily decide that the evidence is there, but the Pbrain wants nothing of it. The Pbrain decides that a not guilty verdict can relieve them of the psychological pain and guilt arising from the fact that they would be a direct cause of a fellow human dying.

Of course, in these situations, responsible citizens need to listen to the pleadings of the Pbrain and consider those issues, but must ultimately rely on their Lbrain to make the most reasonable and logical decision based on facts rather than raw emotion or instinctual inclinations.

There are other issues which lead to these types of conflicts. I'll leave those for another day.