In the "old brain," the limbic system, lies an organ, which when under developed or diseased, can be causative in serial killing and some of the most destructive human behavior we know: the AMYGDALA. We do not know to what extent people, once brains have been developed and programmed in early youth, are under control of all they think or feel. Are they responsible? Do they know right from wrong as "normal" people do? Only God can answer this question.
The average man, as well as courts of law, as a matter of maintaining a reasonably orderly and safe society, thinks he is able to assess whether someone knew right from wrong—culturally determined anyway—and understood the consequences of his action. I do not believe such to be the case and that what is done to respond to anti-social behavior is often misinformed and simply what is convenient. We are indeed a people who walk in darkness.
The AMYGDALA works in conjunction with a number of the other organs in that ancient lower section called the limbic system. This almond-shaped organ, in that "old brain" that developed hundreds of thousands of years ago, seated deep in the temporal lobe, helped to make primitive man (and us today) survive. It affects our emotional side, which can make for tenderness or diseased or underdeveloped, it can be a cause of our having dark, dark thoughts and doing horrible things—which many may see as contributing to their survival. It has never dawned upon most of us that we eat, drink water, and have sex to survive in some way. Unless we can survive, nothing else matters.
It is the prefrontal lobe of the brain that makes judgments, reasons, and contributes to the monitoring of limbic activity. But supposed the prefrontal lobe is diseased or damaged? No matter what the average man or judges and jurors, who have been used to inferring what the mind thinks from what people do—like befriending, loving, stealing, killing, etc.—believes, the sinner may be as sinned against as sinning. The neural structures that enable the rest of us to make moral judgments, to determine right from wrong are simply not functioning "normally." It was probably more than Waco that caused Timothy McVeigh to feel justified in 168 murders—without blinking an eye. Society's "wrong" became his "right"—was what his brain told him!
If children fail to get the love and affection that most parents show their children—if many children do not get the touching, the hugs, and kisses most parents give their children—the limbic system could fail to get the neural structures for "normal" behavior. And if the AMYGDALA becomes diseased or under -developed, a person can respond with brutal, community-horrifying behavior. Society can punish all it wants to, and it will not be any more able to deter shocking anti-social behavior than it can deter damaging tornadoes or earthquakes.
What each of us knows is what our brain tells us. And we may not be able to control what it tells us—no matter the consequences to a society which may have created or tolerated an environment that could affect brain behavior. There are consequences to the brain in the ways we choose to live, to entertain ourselves—and especially in the ways we raise our children, whose brains are maturing, by forming cells and interconnections.