'Can our Criminal Justice system survive in a Deterministic universe?' - Assessment of the Criminal Justice system's response.

In recent years the growing suspicion has emerged that human free will may be an illusion, and that in fact we are all living an existance blisfully unaware of an ever present deterministic process operating within us.

This modern view has been heavily criticised as it seems that this opinion will become a threat as it may leave us devoid of any moral and personal responsibility.

Not only does this statement pose a threat to our own personal sense of morality, it is becoming an increasingly large danger to our criminal justice system. This is due to the fact that as it stands, our criminal justice system pre-supposes the freedom of will due to rules and regulations that have been layed down by our Government as a response to our own personal conscience, a conscience which has become the foundations for the manner in which society is conducted.

In this post I am going to consider the view that the criminal justice system has adapted to a supposed deterministic universe.

It does seem that our criminal jusice system has responded to this by introducing verdicts that go beyond the standard realms of 'Guilty' or 'Not Guilty', as a person may now be convicted as 'Guilty' to a degree of insanity, thus lessening their sentence and setting matters of reformation into practice, for example the more recent 'extreme emotional disturbance' (EED) defence. I will be assessing the reponse of the Criminal Justice system by looking at several pieces of evidence, the first is below:

1. Litwack, Galperin and Kirschner analysed cases of intentional murder or attempted intentional murder between 1988 and 1997 in order to determine what factors played a part in determining which verdict was the outcome. They collectively found that jurors, judges and prosecutors were much more likely to accept a defence based on EED when the defendant's behaviour was significantly motivated by a genuine emotional fear for a loved one, and thus their actions were carried out on the belief that their actions were a movement of protection rather than that of vengance. Litwack and other authors were keen to stress that an EED claim was simply not accepted on terms that the defendant felt strong emotions such as anger or jealousy, and that the fact of the matter is that for an EED case to be allowed the emotions and characteristics of the defendant had to fit with the circumstances of the crime, therefore it is evident that the reasonableness of the emotion and overall EED was critically assessed.

- This is the first of many responses that I will continue to evaluate. I shall add further pieces of evidence onto this post.