Oh, anecdotal evidence...compelling.
Ok here is my anecdotal evidence.
My father and I worked on a Death Penalty case in Arizona. The defendant's name was John Patrick Eastlack. His case is actually very famous in the annals of death penalty litigation.
John was born to a mother, who on the day she gave birth, was brought into the hospital clinically dead from alcohol poisoning. She was recessitated and gave birth to a boy that was first given the name Perry. His mother walked out the hospital after recoveing from the birth and never returned to see her child again. John was sent from foster home to foster home and kept coming back to an orphanage. We were able to interview nurses in the orphanage who though they did not remember John, remembered that they were understaffed and overworked. One nurse reported that the children would cry sometimes for more than an hour before being picked up or fed.
At 16 months John was adopted by Kathie and Robie Eastlack at 16 months of age. One of their first memories of John was that a member of the family was walking by his highchair and spilled ice cold milk on John and that he exhibited no startle response. For anyone that has read studies of psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder, you know that lack of startle response is a big indicator. The Eastlack's were a middle class white family when they adopted John. Mom was a social worker and now has a Ph.D in Psychology. Dad was a mathmatician. They had a comfortable life and wanted for nothing.
WHile John went to school he was always in trouble, always committed petty crimes and forged checks. He went to a youth facility twice as a juvenile and then when he became an adult he went to prison for credit card fraud. He and another guy escaped from a medium security facility and while on the run he killed a couple in their 80's because they had seen him on TV and threatened to turn him in.
While we worked on the appeal, we were able to get all his adoption info from the state of Minnesota which has very good records of their adoptees. We found out that Johns biological father was on death row in Arkansas. His Maternal Grandfather was killed in a gun battle with police after being caught in the act of stealing a safe. His biological brothers were small time repeat offender felons. His paternal uncle had in prison for murdering a man in a bar fight. There were numerous other biological family member with whom John had NEVER met. Yet when you compared Johns BEHAVIOR to that of the family he had never known he fit right in.
Now I don't think it was ALL nature. His mom killing herself with alcohol and then being revived so she could give birth to John did not help. In our interviews with her she admitted drinking heavily through her pregnancy with John as well as is other siblings. She admitted to doing drugs and getting intoxicated to the point of blackout while pregnant. So that obviously did not help. But the in utero exposure to drugs and alcohol coupled with the genetic loading for antisocial personality traits could not be overcome by being raised in a really good home.
You can read some of what I have talked about on the internet. Kathy Norgard (his moms remarried name) has used this case to talk primarily about FAS. She is not very fond of my father because she did not want him to testify at the appeal about the genetic loading as well as the FAS. She thought the FAS was enough to mitigate John's sentence and that testimony about his antisocial personality would actually harm his chance for commutation. I am absolutely positive that without the extensive genogram we did based on the extensive interviews done with his biological family, John would have been executed. His sentence was ultimately commuted and not too many years ago John was stabbed in the Prison library.
