Just because the agent would’ve never made a different choice, doesn’t mean these things don’t matter anymore, it’s wholly irrelevant to whether or not we should punish them.

i do not make claims about punishments for actions, but instead i am talking about moral responsibility. consider a cat knocking over my cup, compared to a child who does it on purpose. your inclination is to hold the child morally responsible but not the cat. though you may punish the cat, you would not think that the cat is capable of the type of moral reasoning a child is capable of.

it may help to consider the example of a tree falling accidentally by gravity and killing a person. is that tree morally responsible for murder?