when weaponized science & questions of remorse become a death sentence.
You've probably never heard of behavioral genetics. Judges and juries have.
1,585
Criminal Cases
32
Death Penalty Cases
2
Research Studies
Between 2005 and 2012, behavioral genetics appeared in at least 1,585 American criminal cases¹. Between 2007-2011 it was used in 32 death penalty cases². These numbers largely exclude jury trials. The real number is higher.
Behavioral genetics is supposed to humanize defendants. In the wrong hands, applied to the wrong population, it does the opposite. It labels. It condemns.
lack of remorse
70%
And once a defendant is labeled dangerous, something else happens.
Jurors start looking for proof.
In capital cases, 70% of jurors who voted for death cited lack of remorse as a reason. No other factor, outside the crime itself, carries more weight in a death sentence.³
Yet there is no evidence that remorse can be accurately evaluated in a courtroom. None. And research shows that race directly affects whether a jury believes a defendant is remorseful at all.³
A label. An unmeasurable standard. A death sentence. It's time to pay attention.
Behavioral genetics: the “Warrior gene”
11
Criminal Cases
9
States
2
Countries
*Between 1995 and 2016.
Between 1995 and 2016, the so-called "warrior gene", a variant of the MAOA gene linked to aggression in studies that many scientists say don't tell the whole story, was introduced in 11 criminal cases across 9 U.S. states and 2 countries. In every case, a defense attorney brought it in. In every case, it was meant to help the defendant.
It rarely did.
The studies behind the warrior gene were conducted predominantly on white men. But the evidence was used in courtrooms across all races, with uneven results. White defendants were more likely to benefit. For Black defendants and men of color, the same evidence was more often used to argue they were born dangerous and would be again.⁴
The results were brutal and unpredictable. In Arkansas, a man avoided death row, experts aren't sure the gene evidence had anything to do with it. In two other cases, it changed nothing. Death sentences came down regardless. In New Mexico, the evidence was rejected before it ever reached a jury. In Texas, a prosecutor picked up the defense's own science and used it to put a man on death row.
This is not a flaw in the system. This is the system working exactly as it was built to, using science to make bias look like fact.
A Black man's DNA was used to put him on death row. Nobody stopped it. Nobody was held accountable. And it is still happening.
The system won't
fix itself.
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