I once was a teaching witness in a trial where a pivotal issue was whether eight seconds (as recorded by a CCTV camera) is enough time for someone in a life-threatening circumstance to premeditate a murder. (My two cents was that under the circumstances involved, eight seconds not only wasn’t enough time for a brain to do premeditated thinking, it wasn’t enough time for it to do any thinking, and free won’t–ness was an irrelevant concept; the jury heartily disagreed.)
