Can Your Genes Make You Murder?

[brian0918]

I found this story absolutely repulsing. A man told his kids to say goodbye to their mom, got drunk, and then proceeded to kill his wife's friend (with a gun and machete), and then attempted to kill his wife with a machete. It's later determined by a psychiatrist and biologist that he has a type of gene that gives him a propensity toward violence, and also has a history of child abuse. The jury finds that his actions were *not* premeditated, and the victim's death is considered "manslaughter". So instead of the death penalty, he gets 32 years in prison, and will likely be out on parole much sooner.

What's the best counterargument to this nonsense? Here are my attempts:

He has a history of violence. For him to ignore that fact, and still put himself in high-risk situations where he is liable to go into fits of rage (e.g. getting drunk), is irrational. He knew full well that he was capable of such violence beforehand, yet he chose to make bad decisions that led him to the inevitable.

It would be like Bruce Banner choosing to put himself in situations where he is highly likely to turn into the Hulk and do things out of his control. He should be held just as culpable for his actions as a normal person, if not more-so, given his foreknowledge of the likelihood of such a result.

Is it a valid analogy to compare this to shooting a machine gun in the air, and then blaming the law of gravity for killing people when the bullets come flying back to the ground? "I have no control over gravity!"

Edited July 1, 2010 by brian0918

[DavidOdden]

A man told his kids to say goodbye to their mom, got drunk, and then proceeded to kill his wife's friend (with a gun and machete)....

The jury finds that his actions were *not* premeditated, and the victim's death is considered "manslaughter".

The jury ignored the law, and I'm not sure what can be done about that. The problem is not that we need a clearer argument that this was first degree murder, the problem is that the jury just didn't care. The evidence is clear that the act was premeditated (that is obvious from telling the kids to say goodbye to their mamma). Premeditation does not require careful and methodical plotting. 1st and 2nd degree murder are distinguish in terms of whether the killer gets the idea of killing the victim and immediately acts on it, versus gets the idea and pursues it over time. In both cases, the intent is to kill (which was clearly there). Manslaughter, in Tennessee, requires adequate provocation that would lead a reasonable man to act irrationally, which is clearly not applicable here. If the jury believed that he had no free will, then they failed in their duty, because a prerequisite for convicting a person of murder is that they be legally sane, and he should have been entirely acquitted. So on all grounds, the jury was just plain in the wrong.

[SapereAude]

I wouldn't say your genes can make you murder but many are predisposed genetically to mental illnesses.

The problem with saying that if someone knows they are predisposed to mental illness they are responsible for knowing that and taking precautions is that part of being crazy is not seeing yourself as crazy. My wife works with extreme cases of homeless/poor mentally ill. With some disorders you get them on meds, they start getting better and then one day they go into a paranoid cycle and decide their meds are poison and their doctor is trying to kill them. True mental illness (the real kind-not the made up to get away with murder kind) is a tragic thing.

Regardless though... I don't believe in the insanity defense anyway. If someone is so far gone sick that they have no control that is hardly a reason to let them back into society.

[brian0918]

The problem with saying that if someone knows they are predisposed to mental illness they are responsible for knowing that and taking precautions is that part of being crazy is not seeing yourself as crazy.

There's no evidence this guy is crazy or insane. He is certainly predisposed to fits of rage if things set him off - e.g. being overcome by adrenaline. So the most you could say is that during the time he is in his rage, he is crazy. But at all other times, he is normal. He is also fully aware of these facts (like Bruce Banner is about turning into Hulk). This guy should have asked himself, "WWBBD?", and realized the answer is to avoid the risk associated with his propensity toward violence. No guns, no machetes, no alcohol. He didn't, and so should face the consequences of his actions.

Edited July 1, 2010 by brian0918

[SapereAude]

There's no evidence this guy is crazy or insane.

I think my post addressed the nature of people falsely claiming illness to get off the hook.

Your post title asks a broader question, the quote you pulled in the above quote was addressing the broad question, not the particular case.

[D'kian]

If he knows he's prone to fits of rage, and he has been violent in the past, then he should have sought some form of psychological or medical help.

[TuringAI]

If he knows he's prone to fits of rage, and he has been violent in the past, then he should have sought some form of psychological or medical help.

That's not always possible.

Unless a nation holds the principle that all mentally ill people deserve treatment with no strings attached, and also carried out this principle with absolute consistency, we will always have those who are unable to receive help.

We shouldn't want nationalized mental ill care, but at the same time it's cruel to punish the mentally ill the same as one wold punish a regular human beings. Part of a just society is that we recognize people for who they are and make our choices based on that. A mentally ill person is not the same as a non mentally ill person.

[Hermes]

This is a complicated issue ... and a simple one. I have no easy answer here. (The other quickies posted did little to illuminate the problem.) First of all, we all have a "violence gene" if you want to call it that. Smile into the mirror and consider those incisors and canines. Also, alcohol impairs judgment and lowers inhibitions. Therefore, how you act when you are drunk is how you really are, not an exception to your true self.

As I was completing an associate's in criminal justice, I wrote a paper for a seminar class on the subject of "Genes and Crime." I did not make up my mind before I wrote the paper. I did not even have a better frame for the question. My research revealed (no surprise) that several significant national studies by highly qualified academics over the past 150 years attempted to identify the relationship between heredity and criminality. There is no consensus, but there are many compelling facts. The fundamental problem with all such studies is that they look at populations, not individuals.

Individuals are intractable. Sigmund Freud opened the door to rational investigation of motive. He provided few quantifiable questions and I daresay no answers. However, he did launch the inquiries that bring the common acknowledgement that a person may not know "why" they act as they do. Compulsions, obsessions, phobias, and other problems are rooted in the subconscious mind. Nathaniel Branden came to understand this between his first book and his third. His goal in therapy became to bring the subject to full focus and rational understanding of those areas clouded by evasion and repression.

But your self-awareness is not (or may not be) measurable from the outside. Bank robber Willie Sutton may or may not have been completely honest with us or himself when he said that he robbed banks because "that's where the money is." Did he have a "robber gene"? (Don't we all?) As a child, was he abused or unloved or ignored or abandoned or whatever? (Who was not? Do you think it was esy being young Franklin D. Roosevelt?)

Completing a bachelor of science degree in criminology, I created a presentation for my senior seminar based on Ayn Rand's theory of evasion, the blank-out. This time, my mind was made up before I began. Among my visual aids was the chapter on Evasion from "John Galt Speaks" from YouTube. Now that I have completed a master's, I still believe that the jury must accept the accused as they find him, without speculating about his psyche. You cannot open it up and look. You can only judge the actor by his actions.

(That said, I grant fully also, that many so-called "mentally ill" could be easily treated with nutrition and many others might never be treatable at all. That is yet another problem.)

As for that so-called "violent gene" the so-called "warrior gene" is given expression by real warriors. While warfare itself a problem to be solved, the easy fact remains that one man joins the army and another man kills his wife. If there is any remediation possible for that second man (or the first, really), it is beyond the scope of criminal law.

There are deep questions here. I trust that this sheds some light on the immediate topic.

Edited July 4, 2010 by Hermes

[DavidOdden]

First of all, we all have a "violence gene" if you want to call it that.

What exactly does this "violence gene" force us to do? What specific region of human DNA houses this gene? Get serious.

If there is any remediation possible for that second man (or the first, really), it is beyond the scope of criminal law.

What is not beyond the scope of criminal law is actually applying the law -- which the jury patently did not do.