Are you less responsible for killing someone if you have the genealogical precursor to do so?

Is murder less severe if you are predisposed to commit it?

Or more specifically, should you be absolved of your crime of ending someone’s life because you were apparently born to do so?

No.

Murder is murder, sure there are degrees based on the level of severity, self defence etc., but killing someone is a decision.

A man in Italy convicted of murder has had his prison sentence cut by a full year after appealing the original judgement after finding out that he has a gene variant linked to aggression.

But genes can only give you insight into how someone is likely to behave in extremely broad and general terms, but certainly does come anywhere near showing how or why someone would act in a specific circumstance or act. Most behaviour is learned or environmental, not genetic.

"Everything we know about family history still doesn't diminish our own responsibility for how we make choices," Says Dr Terrie Moffat, a geneticist at King's College London and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Can you imagine being absolved of a debt because you had a genetic predisposition to spend or gamble?

How about being absolved of grand larceny because you have the gene responsible for naivety?
Such judgments are ludicrous and ultimately only serve to disenfranchise the public (and victims of crime most prominently) of the obvious ineptitude of the justice and legal systems. It is literally getting away with murder.

What do you think?

Source.