Genes Get Criminal Time Off

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A killer in Italy has gotten a lighter sentence because of his genes:

An Italian court has cut the sentence given to a convicted murderer by a year because he has genes linked to violent behaviour — the first time that behavioural genetics has affected a sentence passed by a European court. But researchers contacted by Nature have questioned whether the decision was based on sound science.

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During the trial, Bayout’s lawyer, Tania Cattarossi, asked the court to take into account that her client may have been mentally ill at the time of the murder. After considering three psychiatric reports, the judge, Paolo Alessio Vernì, partially agreed that Bayout’s psychiatric illness was a mitigating factor and sentenced him to 9 years and 2 months in prison — around three years less than Bayout would have received had he been deemed to be of sound mind.

But at an appeal hearing in May this year, Pier Valerio Reinotti, a judge of the Court of Appeal in Trieste, asked forensic scientists for a new independent psychiatric report to decide whether he should commute the sentence further.

For the new report, Pietro Pietrini, a molecular neuroscientist at Italy’s University of Pisa, and Giuseppe Sartori, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Padova, conducted a series of tests and found abnormalities in brain-imaging scans and in five genes that have been linked to violent behaviour — including the gene encoding the neurotransmitter-metabolizing enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA).

You may remember the MAOA gene from our discussion of genetics and credit card debt. A low-efficiency variant of the gene has been linked to violent and anti-social behavior, as well as lack of impulse control. Of course, saying “my genes made me do it” is utter bullshit, even if the science were there — which it’s not:

“The point is that behavioural genetics is not there yet, we cannot explain individual behaviour, only large population statistics,” says Nita Farahany of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who specializes in the legal and ethical issues arising from behavioural genetics and neuroscience.

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According to Farahany, who updates a personal database on sentences passed in the United States, in the past five years there have been at least 200 cases where lawyers have attempted to use genetic evidence to support the idea their clients’ were predisposed to violent behaviour, depression or drug or alcohol abuse. In Britain, there have been at least 20 such cases in the past five years.

This sort of defense is going to become increasingly widespread. For the most part, I think society has very little tolerance for it — it looks just like the slippery slope it is. If everyone’s a slave to their genes or brain structures, then how can anyone be held accountable for anything?

But what do you think? Is a “violence gene” worth a couple years off your sentence if you murder someone? Or is it a good reason to keep you locked up for life?