<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Mind On Trial]]></title><description><![CDATA[Bridging Science and Storytelling]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 09:09:04 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.mindontrial.org/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[I Did Not Do It, But I Said I Did: The Neuroscience of False Confessions]]></title><description><![CDATA[In the spring of 1989, a woman was brutally attacked while jogging in Central Park. Within days, five teenagers had been arrested. Within weeks, four of them had confessed on video. The confessions were detailed. They were emotional. They were played for the jury. They were also entirely false. The Central Park Five, as they came to be known, spent between six and thirteen years in prison before DNA evidence identified the actual perpetrator, a convicted rapist named Matias Reyes who had no...]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/post/i-did-not-do-it-but-i-said-i-did-the-neuroscience-of-false-confessions</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a068d3a0b9e4f37fd23a1bf</guid><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 03:05:34 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Maya Dave</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Broken Compass: Traumatic Brain Injury, Criminal Behavior, and What the Law Does With Both]]></title><description><![CDATA[In 1848, a railroad foreman named Phineas Gage survived an accident that should have killed him. An iron rod was driven through the front of his skull at high speed, passing completely through his brain and landing several feet away. He was conscious within minutes. He walked to the doctor himself. Gage recovered physically. He lived for another twelve years. But the people who knew him said he was never the same person again. Before the accident, he had been described as efficient, capable,...]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/post/the-broken-compass-traumatic-brain-injury-criminal-behavior-and-what-the-law-does-with-both</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69ffaa2ab1ac8cd94fa4af52</guid><pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2026 21:43:47 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Maya Dave</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Isolation Does to the Brain: The Neuroscience of Solitary Confinement]]></title><description><![CDATA[Imagine a room approximately the size of a parking space. You are in it for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day. There is a slot in the door for food. There is no meaningful human contact. There is nothing to do. This continues not for a day, not for a week, but for months or years at a time. This is solitary confinement. It is currently used in prisons and jails across the United States, and on any given day, an estimated eighty thousand people are being held in some form of isolated...]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/post/what-isolation-does-to-the-brain-the-neuroscience-of-solitary-confinement</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fd59e0ff1f3255572c0362</guid><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 03:35:32 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Maya Dave</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity: What the Law Says, What Psychiatry Knows, and Why They Do Not Agree]]></title><description><![CDATA[On the morning of March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan outside a Washington hotel. Reagan survived. Hinckley was arrested at the scene. Two years later, a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. The public was outraged. Congress changed the law within months. Several states abolished the insanity defense entirely. What almost no one stopped to ask was whether the jury got it right. That question sits at the center of one of the oldest and most misunderstood...]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/post/not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity-what-the-law-says-what-psychiatry-knows-and-why-they-do-not-agre</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fab76c6b7f440cd63fe1c9</guid><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 03:39:42 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Maya Dave</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Your Brain Remembers Is Not What Happened: Memory, Eyewitness Testimony, and the Limits of the Law]]></title><description><![CDATA[In 1984, a woman named Jennifer Thompson was raped in her apartment in North Carolina. During the attack, she made a decision. She studied her attacker's face with as much focus as she could manage, memorizing every detail, because she was determined to identify him if she survived. She did survive. She picked Ronald Cotton out of a photo lineup. She identified him again in a live lineup. She testified against him at trial with total certainty. She told the jury she was one hundred percent...]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/post/what-your-brain-remembers-is-not-what-happened-memory-eyewitness-testimony-and-the-limits-of-the</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f961936d919e5ce86ee206</guid><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 03:23:50 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Maya Dave</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Algorithm on the Stand: Risk Assessment Tools, Racial Bias, and the Future of Sentencing]]></title><description><![CDATA[In 2013, a man named Eric Loomis stood before a judge in Wisconsin and was sentenced to six years in prison. The judge cited many factors. One of them was a score — a number generated by a computer program called COMPAS, which had assessed Loomis as high risk for reoffending. Loomis had never seen the algorithm. He had no way to challenge it. He did not know what questions it asked, how it weighed the answers, or why it reached the conclusion it did. The company that built it considered the...]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/post/the-algorithm-on-the-stand-risk-assessment-tools-racial-bias-and-the-future-of-sentencing</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f67d877b1c42fb24f66573</guid><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 22:44:09 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Maya Dave</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Open Verdict is Now Accepting Submissions – Here Is What We Are Looking For]]></title><description><![CDATA[A poem about forgetting and a neuroscience paper about memory are asking the same question. They just speak different languages. For too long those two languages have lived in separate rooms – the scientist in one, the artist in another, both circling the same truths about what it means to be human without ever quite meeting in the middle. Open Verdict exists because we think that separation is a mistake. And we are done with it. Starting today, Mind on Trial's literary journal is open for...]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/post/open-verdict-is-now-accepting-submissions-here-is-what-we-are-looking-for</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f02bff7475e016cb92cfa4</guid><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 03:43:28 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Maya Dave</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Teenage Brain on Trial: How Neuroscience Changed the Way America Sentences Juveniles]]></title><description><![CDATA[What does the law do with a brain that isn’t finished growing? This isn’t a hypothetical question. If the part of the brain that’s responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and understanding long-term consequences isn’t fully developed and still under active construction–biologically, measurably, verifiably–does that change how we assign blame? Does it change what a just punishment would be? For most of American legal history, the answer was no. A crime was a crime. Intent was intent....]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/post/the-teenage-brain-on-trial-how-neuroscience-changed-the-way-america-sentences-juveniles</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69eebf393fe49635e6905238</guid><pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 03:01:02 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Maya Dave</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Is Neurolaw – and Why Should You Care?]]></title><description><![CDATA[Imagine, you commit a crime. The evidence is there, clearly, that you have done it. But then, all of a sudden, a brain scan shows that the part of your brain responsible for controlling impulses (the prefrontal cortex) was severely damaged, prior to the crime. Does that change anything in the ruling? More importantly, should it? So What Actually Is Neurolaw? Now, many people have never heard of Neurolaw. So what is this obscure–but not new–field? Neurolaw sits at the intersection of...]]></description><link>https://www.mindontrial.org/post/what-is-neurolaw-and-why-should-you-care</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69ed9f1604fc81dfe25dfba7</guid><pubDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 05:34:32 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Maya Dave</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>