Immediately, [defense attorney Wylie] Richardson went to forensic psychiatrist William Bernet of Vanderbilt University and asked him to give Waldroup a psychiatric evaluation. Bernet also took a blood sample and brought it to Vanderbilt’s Molecular Genetics Laboratory. Since 2004, Bernet and laboratory director Cindy Vnencak-Jones have been analyzing the DNA of people like Waldroup.
They’ve tested some 30 criminal defendants, most of whom were charged with murder. They were looking for a particular variant of the MAO-A gene ”” also known as the warrior gene because it has been associated with violence. Bernet says they found that Waldroup has the high-risk version of the gene.
“His genetic makeup, combined with his history of child abuse, together created a vulnerability that he would be a violent adult,” Bernet explains.
Over the fierce opposition of prosecutors, the judge allowed Bernet to testify in court that these two factors help explain why Waldroup snapped that murderous night.
“We didn’t say these things made him become violent, but they certainly constituted a risk factor or a vulnerability,” Bernet says.
It certainly would be convenient if we could just hang any behavior we knew in our heart was wrong on the peg labeled “It’s not my fault. God made me this way. Celebrate me! Don’t criticise me.” And, you know, we are really into convenient.
“This was somebody who was intoxicated and mad and was gonna hurt somebody,” Holmes says. “And it had little to nothing to do with his genetic makeup.” I would go with the statement of this Psychiatrist. This was a successful effort to medicalize culpability. So many of these stories sound like the lyrics to “Officer Krupke” of West Side Story. http://www.risa.co.uk/sla/song.php?songid=15021.
Progressives really seem to want to believe in a determinism of convenience. Bad actions aren’t really really bad because, being determined by genetics, they can’t be helped. On the other hand, negative reactions to them are not determined. They are instead the result of bigotry or prejudice in people who have free will. Consequently, we’re supposed to conclude that the negative reaction to bad actions is the moral failure, rather than the bad actions themselves.
The unfortunate implication is that there are at least two classes of human beings. Some have a more complete moral agency, some with less. But the victimhood of those with less moral agency means that any punishment, whether imprisonment or institutionalization, would be unjust. A culture that buys into that kind of incoherent philosophy cannot survive.
A Christian anthropology and understanding of human nature would go a long way toward correcting this.
[blockquote] “Oh I’m sure,” Lard says. “And his background — nature vs. nurture.”
Another juror, Debbie Beaty, says the science helped persuade her that Waldroup was not entirely in control of his actions. [/blockquote]
The trouble is that none of us is “entirely in control” of our actions. There are all of the things we can’t control that influence our capacity to choose and then there is a lifetime of our own choices that either increases or decreases our ability to choose. This is the point of the parable(s) of the five talents.
It is our ability to rise above “nature vs nurture” that makes us more than animals. Our ability to choose is a big part of what it means to be created in God’s image.
Well, they MIGHT make want to murder defense lawyers who make such weaselly, meretricious defenses. L