Free Will

My client is not responsible for his actions, Your Honor. He's suffering from a severe case of free will!

An unconscious neural activity precedes any conscious choice or action by about 1/2 second [Bruce Bower, Who's the Boss, Science News, 26 Apr 1986, p.266], giving the illusion that the conscious mind controls one's choices and actions.

However, the initial unconscious neural activity is fully consistent with one's personality, because it is strictly determined by the physical memory traces in the neural circuits of one's brain, encoding one's motives, desires, goals, and past experiences.

If one's choices and actions were truly "free," in the sense of not being strictly determined by the neural representations of our beliefs, intentions, goals, etc., then they would be uncaused and unpredictable, and one could not be held responsible for them.