Miles's blog

Prosecution offices already employ lots of experts in fields other than law, including those with expertise in computer science, information technology, graphics, media, and other fields.  In the future prosecutors may need to employ geneticists also.

According to a hypothetical study reported in the journal Science, judges gave lighter sentences to those who were identified as being genetically predisposed to violence.  There was some prevailing thought that these offenders were somehow not responsible for their actions and therefore did not deserve maximum penalty.  The judges chose to overlook the obvious conclusion that these people were more likely to commit violent crimes in the future and, therefore, longer sentences would protect the public from these inevitable crimes.

This study, and these responses, are frightening on so many levels.  Let’s start with the basics, how can anyone know who is prone to violence?  I am always skeptical of these kind of scientific conclusions because science in areas like this seems to be changing all the time.  The things science thinks they know which turn out to be wrong are legion.  Cutting-edge science like this makes me wary.  Perhaps in the old days this sort of evidence would be excluded as unreliable, but under the new rules most of this sort of thing will come in, I guess.

And just what does “predisposed to violence” mean?  Does that mean 100 percent of the people with whatever trait they are identifying commit violent crimes, or 10 percent?  If it is less than 100 percent then when does individual accountability come in?  Somehow judges are thinking “the defendant couldn’t help himself,” but is that really true?  Science can look at the brain, but it can never read a mind.  How can we ever know what someone could have helped or not?

And even if someone is “predisposed” does that mean they are not responsible, or should not be held totally accountable?  The victim, of course, does not care whether the defendant was predisposed or not. 

We are all the result of our brain chemistry—from brain surgeons to athletes to doctors, we all just work with what we are born with.  We celebrate those who use these attributes to achieve great things.  We don’t disregard the achievements of Stephen Hawking by just putting it down to his being “born smart.”  We celebrate his genius.   All of us revere the super intelligent and are grateful we have such people in our world.  Similarly, we don’t downplay Peyton Manning’s touchdowns by saying he was predisposed to reading defenses.  Why should we excuse the crimes of violent criminals by allowing their brain chemistry to reduce their culpability?

This kind of evidence strikes me as strange in a death penalty case.  The argument that a killer should be excused because of his brain chemistry seems to run counter, in some ways, to the evidence of a bad childhood.  Either he was born this way or he was made this way.  A mass murder, like say James Holmes, is obviously not right.  Something inside snapped to make a, to that point, fairly normal grad student into one of the worst mass murderers in American history.  We know he suffered from some sort of mental illness.  Now the defense can check out both his brain (nature) and his upbringing (nurture) until they find just the right kind of evidence to appeal to the jury’s sympathy.  And you know they will find something.

I have never done a death penalty case, so I am not sure how to argue for a jury to sign a death warrant, but I do wonder why this argument, which is no more than an appeal for sympathy for someone who is likely to kill again, works.  To me it argues more forcefully for execution.  I guess it appeals to the good side in most of us, the side which wants to be sympathetic to those less fortunate than ourselves. The kind of response normal people have, not those who are predisposed to violence.