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In 2009, an Italian court reduced a murderers sentence by one year because doctors had identified a gene in the defendants DNA, called MAOA, that had been linked to violent behavior. MAOA findings have been generally used in murder trials, sometimes to suggest diminished capacity of the defendant to premeditate his criminal behavior, but most often to reduce a sentence, writes Paul Appelbaum, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, in an essay published today in Neuron. In the essay, Appelbaum explains that genetic evidence demonstrating a defendants predisposition for antisocial behavior or mental illness is showing up in courtrooms at an ever-quickening pace. And that pace, he warns, might be outrunning the legal systems ability to interpret it.