Italian Court Reduces Murderer's Sentence Due To Presence of Gene Linke To Violence

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 15:14 in Psychology & Sociology

As Doctor Hibert so eloquently put, "only one in two million people has what we call the "evil gene". Hitler had it, Walt Disney had it, and Freddy Quimby has it." And while we understand that line as a joke, it seems that an Italian court has taken the idea far more seriously. For the first time ever, an Italian court reduced the sentence of a convicted murderer after forensic scientists highlighted the presence of a gene linked to violent behavior as evidence of the murderer's soundness of mind. The court, convinced that the criminal was not fully in control of his actions, and thus less liable for the crime, reduced the penalty from nine years behind bars to eight. The genetic evidence was introduced in conjunction with brain scans that showed abnormalities in the murderer's brain, along with reports from conventional psychiatrists. While the defense managed to produce a...

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