Lighter sentence for murderer with "violent" genes

Nature recently reported that "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."

There are questions over whether the science is well enough understood to be used in a court of law, the relative roles of inherited genes and the environment and whether this would ever be a legitimate defence. I worry that a greater role of genetic information like this could lead to it being used to judge people for their capacity to be violent before any action.

The full story is available on Nature.com http://bit.ly/4qhA6l (subscription website)