Murderer With "Violent Genes" Gets Lighter Sentence in Italian Court

In an Italian court, a murderer has just had his sentence reduced because the judge agreed that the man's genes predisposed him to violent behavior. Abdelmalek Bayout, an Algerian immigrant to Italy, admitted to stabbing and killing Walter Felipe Novoa Perez, a Colombian, when the two men got in a fight over the kohl eye make-up that Bayout was wearing. At trial, the defense team argued that Bayout was mentally ill at the time of the murder; the judge agreed that his psychiatric condition was a mitigating factor, and gave him a reduced sentence of 9 years. But at an appeal hearing, Bayout's lawyers argued that his sentence should be shortened further based not just on psychiatric evaluations, but also brain scans and genetic testing. Pietro Pietrini, a molecular neuroscientist who worked on the new evaluations, explains that the brain scans showed abnormalities, and the genetic test revealed irregularities in ...