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In de vorige Kroniek rechtspraak strafrecht (TvGR 2016, nr. 1) bespraken wij de rechtsontwikkelingen, in het bijzonder de relevante rechtspraak, tot en met 1 december 2015. In deze Kroniek staan de belangrijkste ontwikkelingen vanaf die datum tot en met 31 augustus 2017 centraal.

Background: At the end of patients' lives, physicians sometimes provide medication with the explicit intention to hasten death. Physicians' assessment of such acts varies. We studied which characteristics are associated with physicians' classification of these acts.Methods: This study concerns a secondary analysis of a nationwide study on the practice of medical decision-making at the end of life. In 2015, attending physicians of a sample of deceased people (n=9,351) received a questionnaire about end-of-life care and decision-making. The response rate was 78%. We studied 851 cases in which physicians reported that the patient had died as a result of medication they had provided with the explicit intention to hasten death. Chi-square tests and logistic regression analyses were performed.Results: If medication had been provided with the explicit intention to hasten death at the explicit request of the patient, physicians considered "euthanasia", "assisted suicide" or "ending of life" the most appropriate term for their course of action in 82% of all cases, while 17% of physicians chose the term "palliative or terminal sedation". Physicians' classification of their act as "euthanasia", "assisted suicide" or "ending of life" was less likely when patients had a short (1-7 days) or very short (max. 24 hours) life expectancy. Furthermore, such classification was less likely when their act had involved the use of other medication than muscle relaxants. The limited number of cases in which patients had been provided with medication without an explicit patient request were never classified as "euthanasia", "assisted suicide" or "ending of life".Conclusions: Physicians rarely classify the provision of medication with the explicit intention of hastening death as "euthanasia", "assisted suicide" or "ending of life" when patients are in the dying phase and when they provide other medication than muscle relaxants. In these cases, acts are mostly classified as "palliative or terminal sedation". This suggests that the legal distinction between euthanasia and palliative care may not always be clear in clinical practice.

Empirical findings demonstrate that neuroscientific expertise is increasingly prevalent in courtrooms. This suggests that both "territorial conflicts" between law and neuroscience-for example about how to conceptualize concepts like culpability-and questions regarding the integration of neuroscience and law, which both have long been present in theoretical discussions, are now finding their way to legal practice. As jurisdictions around the globe differ on multiple dimensions (e.g., on how concepts like culpability are conceptualized, embedded in legal doctrine, and how integration of neuroscience takes place within (procedural) legal frameworks) analyses on a national level are needed next to universal endeavors. In this article, the Dutch situation will be addressed. First, we will assess whether the theoretical notions underlying Dutch criminal law are compatible with the theoretical discussion between neuroscience and legal doctrine. Second, we turn to empirical evidence as to the way neuroscientific information is brought into Dutch legal practice. Finally, we will examine how (well) the current practice of forensic assessment is able to accommodate neuroscientific information. Herewith, we aim to illustrate that the manner of integration is indeed dependent on jurisdiction specific features and that the international debate would benefit from more national perspectives.

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