Crime and Punishment

One argument in philosophy is that moral responsibility is contingent upon the presence of free will. Indeed, the ability to freely choose someone's action is necessary for her to be morally responsible for them. If I rob a bank, I have committed an ethically blameworthy action. Yet, if I am forced to rob a bank because some particularly manipulative person has a gun to my head, then I am less morally responsible for robbing the bank; if I did otherwise, I'd be dead. Simple enough.

The question, raised on the first day of lecture, is whether a psychiatric condition which predisposed someone to a terrible act of violence absolves him to some extent of his actions. Say someone has overwhelming urges to commit acts of violence due to a disease. He recognizes this in himself, and realizes he is a danger to those around him and turns himself in to an emergency room. Yet the ER eventually releases him, and he never sees a psychiatrist. Finally taken by these urges that have a distinct biologic basis, he murders someone. How bloody are his hands? Is he a modern day Macbeth, driven by circumstances out of his control to do something he tried his best to avoid and wished he had never done? Obviously, he's held accountable to some degree. But should a psychiatric disorder play a role in our moral assessment of his actions? In our condemnation by the justice system?