This chapter reviews how shaken baby syndrome cases are handled in France. Since 2011, national health guidelines published by the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) prompt all healthcare professionals to report to the police all infants with components of the ‘triad’, including subdural haematoma and retinal haemorrhage. The scientific foundations behind these guidelines have been extensively criticised, and their repeal has been requested in front of the French administrative Supreme Court (Conseil d’État). Hundreds of families claiming to be victims of wrongful allegations of child abuse due to medical errors have gathered in an association, Adikia, the largest organization of this kind in the world. Declarative statistics obtained by this association yield interesting insight into wrongful medical determinations of SBS, including the issue of false confessions that is pervasive despite the absence of a formal plea bargaining process in the French criminal justice system.

Emerging neurotechnology offers increasingly individualised brain information, enabling researchers to identify mental states and content. When accurate and valid, these brain-reading technologies also provide data that could be useful in criminal legal procedures, such as memory detection with EEG and the prediction of recidivism with fMRI. Yet, unlike in medicine, individuals involved in criminal cases will often be reluctant to undergo brain-reading procedures. This raises the question of whether coercive brain-reading could be permissible in criminal law. Coercive Brain-Reading in Criminal Justice examines this question in view of European human rights: the prohibition of ill treatment, the right to privacy, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and the privilege against self-incrimination. The book argues that, at present, the established framework of human rights does not exclude coercive brain-reading. It does, however, delimit the permissible use of forensic brain-reading without valid consent. This cautionary, cutting-edge book lays a crucial foundation for understanding the future of criminal legal proceedings in a world of ever-advancing neurotechnology.