Criminals today like to claim their free will has been mutilated by a constant conditioning.

In today’s society, it is often easier to believe that free will has been eliminated than to consider the alternative.

It's Easier to Believe the Excuses

Watching law and order last Wednesday night, an intriguing argument was made.

One defense attorney argued his client was not guilty of a crime – a series of murders – because the client had become a "victim" to the illness of television violence. Television violence had so much influence upon this individual that he was unable to differentiate between right and wrong. He was not a criminal, but a victim. Therefore, the client was not guilty of the several murders he had committed.

The prosecuting attorney made a great point in his closing argument: "We are creatures of free will," he said, "able to make moral choices."

After several days of deliberation, the jury came back with a guilty verdict.

The end result made me happy. What disturbed me a bit was how long it took the jury to decide the verdict. It took DAYS to figure out that television cannot cause a man to kill several people?

This was, for the Thomistic scholar, an open and shut case.

The question has to do with whether the acts were committed voluntarily or not. In the Summa Theologica, Thomas argues that an act in order to be judged on moral grounds must be voluntary. That makes sense. If you truly had no choice, then there was no moral decision.

However, only certain things can cause involuntariness. Aquinas says these are ignorance and violence. That is, one can plead ignorance if, for example, he opened a door and knocked an individual off of a ladder causing injury. If the person opening the door truly did not know there was someone on a ladder on the other side, then we cannot say that the door opener is morally culpable for causing injury.

As for violence, Aquinas was not talking about being influenced by violence on television. Aquinas was talking about physical force exerted upon an individual. If I push someone into the path of a bicyclist, and the bicyclist falls and is injured, no one could make a rational argument that the person I pushed was guilty of causing injury.

Now, fear, Aquinas argues, does not cause an action to be involuntary. If I threaten injury to someone unless he causes injury to another, then obviously I am at fault, but so is that individual. This is often hard to swallow, but truly, the person in fear does not lose his or her free will. Rather, the person in fear may never be more aware of his or her choices than at the moment when he or she must make a decision in the state of fear.

Going back to our television violence victim. Clearly, this individual did not lose his free will by violence or by ignorance. This person, however, is a sign of a new category created in the modern world. Criminals today like to claim their free will has been mutilated by a constant conditioning.

If abused as a child, the individual abuses children. If hated, the person hates. If neglected, the person neglects.

I do not intend to argue that these individuals have no complaint. But, the conditioning in and of itself is not an excuse for sin. In these cases, the individuals still have a free will, but they may not have the virtue of prudence, which Aquinas says is the virtue that enables us to choose what is good. One gets prudence in a way similar to conditioning – through practice.

It is not impossible to not abuse a child if one has been abused. It is not impossible to love if one has been hated. There still is clearly a choice involved; free will has not been eliminated.

Yet, in today’s society, it is often easier to believe that free will has been eliminated than to consider the alternative.

It is easier to believe that someone attacks someone else because he was abused, influenced by movies, on drugs, etc, than to believe that the individual deliberately chose evil.

It is difficult to cope with the idea that someone would deliberately choose to do something evil. We look for reasons and if there are no movies, abuse, drugs, etc., we get confused. "He was such a good kid."

In reality, the only two excuses are ignorance and violence, not as often defined in today’s courtroom, but as Aquinas defined them in the 13^th Century.

Chris Mosmeyer
July 23, 1998