His dad tried to prove that his son is a good peaceful kid by showing reporters his diploma :/

However, and this will infuriate some people, so please don't take it the wrong way -- but in that same article the dad said his son was mugged a year earlier in an incident which involved blunt force trauma to his head (hit so hard that he was hospitalized).

TBIs (Traumatic Brain Injuries) and CTEs (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy) are no joke. CTEs can't be diagnosed until an autopsy, which reveals brain degeneration likely caused by repeated head traumas. Here's a 2017 article covering a neuropathologist who "examined the brains of 111 N.F.L. players — and 110 were found to have C.T.E.". The VA also recognizes and provides life-long service connected care for TBIs, which can lead to life-long issues from a single "blow or jolt to the head...such as a bat or a fist during a fight... the head striking an object, such as the dashboard in a car accident or the ground in a fall, or... the head being affected by a nearby blast or explosion". Part of the care involves "cognitive, and behavioral problems" post-trauma. There's another related component the VA takes into account when dealing with situations in the home referred to as IPV (Intimate Partner Violence), an "invisible wound" which has both caused and been the cause of (in the partner being victimized) violence post-TBI, usually going hand in hand with PTSD. And again, no one is excusing a husband being violent/abusive to his wife and kids just because his brain got scrambled overseas. But it is a reality many families deal with when a loved one returns home with a severe case of TBI.

Brain tumors/growths in certain regions can be as serious as brain injuries from blunt force trauma and close proximity to explosions, which have all been linked to a lot of violence and drastic personality changes. From veterans to combat sportsmen to mass shooters and football players, the evidence points to the fact that violence isn't always a simple moral issue where people are just evil and need punishment. That's not to say that they're not a risk to the general public, but it does need to be acknowledged and addressed when you have a case of physical changes (injuries/growths) leading to behavioral/cognitive changes.

One famous case is Charles Whitman, the Texas clock tower shooter. He snapped one day and went on a rampage killing 18 and injuring 31, starting with stabbing his own mother and wife to death. His autopsy revealed a hypothalamic tumor. In the years leading up to the shooting spree, he started spiraling out of control. He lost his architectural engineering scholarship, became addicted to gambling, grades took a nosedive, and sought professional help for "overwhelming violent impulses". He basically went from an Eagle Scout, former Marine, and engineering student on a scholarship to a mass murderer. He left a note in which he stated that he wanted people to know he "cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this", and that his wife was "as fine...to me as any man could ever hope to have". That's from a 2018 Scientific American article in Behavior & Society titled How Responsible are Killers with Brain Damage?. Experts are split on how these cases should be treated in the courtroom because of the moral implications and justifiable public outrage it would lead to if we used scientific evidence to do what would be perceived as giving people with TBIs and tumors in certain regions of the brain essentially a free pass (for lack of better terms), even if, like in Whitman's case or the guy who killer this jogger in NY, have no criminal record or history of violence. Establishing legal guilt isn't so binary. This theory is really controversial in terms legal implications and how there's no agreement on the role of free will, especially when talking about violence, but one expert in that article suggests that "if a person has genuine impairments in these capabilities, then they possess only a diminished form of free will".

It's sort of like a more extreme version of someone with no criminal/violent history/record killing someone while seriously cognitively impaired (ex: intoxicated), except the level of impairment is far more extreme and not as a result of voluntary actions (alcohol/drugs). Sort of like if someone with a squeaky clean record was up for involuntary vehicular manslaughter, but there was evidence they had a seizure or a stroke at the time, no drugs/alcohol in their system, so that alone caused them to lose control of the vehicle. It's just harder for us to accept that loss of control when it appears voluntary on the surface (stabbing/strangling/shooting).

And to be honest I'd lose my shit if it was my loved one and the killer's lawyer made sound argument with neurologists/neuroscientists giving expert testimony showing that the person who killed someone I love had the same brain injuries/lesions/tumors as others with similar patterns/cases studied by criminologists and neuroscientists over the decades. I'd still want to put a bullet in their head. But from a distant/objective perspective, it's not unreasonable to debate the level of culpability when dealing with these cases. That doesn't mean giving them a free pass, but we can and should at least take into account the fact that good and evil aren't as binary as good people and shitty people. Shitty things can and do happen to otherwise decent people, and the impact ripples out from there.