In her book, Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side, Julia Shaw looks at the science and psychology of evil, and how it’s rooted in our cultures. This excerpt examines a modern-day American villain to see what light can be shed by “America’s most hated man.”

Humans like a sense of order and control, and we don’t like the idea that bad things can happen to good people. But they do, all the time. Accepting this can help us to deal with the underlying inequalities, and try to do something about them — like working to eliminate slavery, reduce extreme poverty, or prevent violent crime. These are probably not, as some believers in a just world might assume, “necessary evils” in society.

Also counter to our just-world hypothesis is accepting that good things can also happen to “bad” people — people who don’t play by the rules, and exploit others.

One of the most blatant examples of taking advantage of human suffering for profit is making life-saving medication extortionately expensive.

In 2015, Martin Shkreli (also known as “Pharma Bro”), the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought the rights to the AIDS drug Daraprim, and almost immediately raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. What was happening seemed to be a clear case of profit over patients. His reckless disregard for the wellbeing of patients earned him the title of “America’s most hated man.”

In 2017, he was charged with multiple counts of fraud. As it turned out, however, after so much public criticism of him and his actions, it was difficult to find neutral jury members. Here is an excerpt of what might be the most bizarre jury selection process of all time, which led to over 200 jurors being “excused” from their duties.

The court: The purpose of jury selection is to ensure fairness and impartiality in this case. If you think that you could not be fair and impartial, it is your duty to tell me. All right. Juror Number 1.

Juror No. 1: I’m aware of the defendant and I hate him.

Benjamin Brafman (Shkreli’s lawyer): I’m sorry.

Juror No. 1: I think he’s a greedy little man.

The court: Jurors are obligated to decide the case based only on the evidence. Do you agree?

Juror No. 1: I don’t know if I could. I wouldn’t want me on this jury.

The court: Juror Number 1 is excused.

…

Juror No. 10: The only thing I’d be impartial about is what prison this guy goes to.

The court: Okay. We will excuse you. Juror 28, do you need to be heard?

Juror No. 28: I don’t like this person at all. I just can’t understand why he would be so stupid as to take an antibiotic which H.I.V. people need and jack it up five thousand percent. I would honestly, like, seriously like to go over there —

The court: Sir, thank you.

Juror No. 28: Is he stupid or greedy? I can’t understand.

…

Juror No. 59: Your Honor, totally he is guilty and in no way can I let him slide out of anything because —

The court: Okay. Is that your attitude toward anyone charged with a crime who has not been proven guilty?

Juror No. 59: It’s my attitude toward his entire demeanor, what he has done to people.

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The court: All right. We are going to excuse you, sir.

Juror No. 59: And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.

…

Juror No. 77: From everything I’ve seen on the news, everything I’ve read, I believe the defendant is the face of corporate greed in America.

Brafman: We would object.

Juror No. 77: You’d have to convince me he was innocent rather than guilty.

That comment from Juror No. 59 was the result of Shkreli buying an unreleased Wu-Tang album and never releasing the music to anyone else, resulting in a member of the Clan calling him a “s---head.”. In response, Shkreli called the rapper old and irrelevant, and threatened to erase the album, stating “Without me, you’re nothing.”

Even after filtering out biased jurors, Shkreli was found guilty of a number of the charges against him. During and after the trial, he was glib, superficial, entitled, posted hateful attention-seeking comments on social media and lied repeatedly. He even lied about being a graduate of Columbia University. This came to light during the trial, when a university administrator reported that there was no record of him ever attending.

That evening, back at home, Shkreli posted a live stream on social media where, seated with his cat on his lap, he attacked critics while wearing a Columbia University T-shirt. He seemed to enjoy messing with people, perhaps even revel in being perceived as evil. It wasn’t until 2018, when he was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud and conspiracy, that the world saw an emotional display. The man who once thought himself untouchable cried in court.

How did he get to this point? It is easy to write him off as a psychopath, or a bad apple, or evil. Indeed, in this section I was going to talk about what Robert Hare, the researcher who developed the psychopathy checklist, has referred to as “snakes in suits.” How being a callous and manipulative psychopath might be a helpful feature in business settings, because it can allow us to make decisions based on money rather than empathy.

Then I caught myself. By using a framework that explains bad business behaviour as the result of psychopathic leaders, we fall back into the fallacy that evil is something other people do. That it is the result of fundamental flaws in a person, rather than a system that is created entirely to frame our measures of success and contribution in monetary terms.

Shkreli is, in many ways, the epitome of what we think a bad boss or corporate CEO is like — a sleazy, self-interested snake in a suit. But we must be careful. He has grown up in a world that glamorizes money, and often rewards those who succeed in business even at the expense of others. Many industries mark up prices for necessary goods, treat workers poorly or pay themselves very high salaries while their employees starve.

Humans can readily adapt to the systems they live in, and Shkreli is among those who take it too far and relish being good at the corporate game. This is not to excuse his actions, but like all of us, Shkreli too is a product of his environment — although likely with some dark tetrad personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, sadism and psychopathy) thrown in that make it even easier for him to ignore reasonable ethics and focus entirely on money and fame.

Still, we must not dehumanize those who dehumanize others.

Perhaps a system that encourages profit over all else has the potential to make us all into monsters.