I am most grateful to the following persons for their contributions to this Essay: Ruben Coen-Cagli, Nestor Davidson, Kathleen Ellis, Janet Freilich, Marianna Gebhardt, David Greenberg, Filippo Maria Lancieri, Jacob Nadler, Mark Patterson, Richard Squire, Ryan Surujnath, and Erica Valencia-Graham. I also thank Alissa Black-Dorward and the Fordham University School of Law library staff for superb research assistance as well as Timothy W. DeJohn for providing information about the Jones case. I received insightful comments on earlier versions of this Essay from the participants in presentations given at Stanford Law School (the BioLawLapalooza 2.0), the Fordham University School of Law, and at The University of Chicago Law Review Symposium on Personalized Law (organized by Omri Ben-Shahar and Ariel Porat). I am indebted to five sources for research funding, without which this project could not have existed: Fordham University School of Law, the Fordham Neuroscience and Law Center, the Gerald Adelman Fellowship, Roger Sacks, and the Barnet and Sharon Phillips Family Fund. No individual or organization acknowledged in this Essay necessarily supports the Essay’s interpretations or conclusions. Responsibility for any mistakes or misjudgments rests solely with the author.
Every criminal case is part of a larger personal story—some headline-grabbing, some entirely mundane; yet each narrative is important to how the criminal justice system assesses an individual’s level of culpability.
