Why are people usually not blamed for actions performed under physical coercion?

In the context of free will and moral responsibility, individuals are generally not held morally responsible for actions performed under physical coercion because they lack the ability to have acted otherwise.1

The concept of free will is fundamentally linked to the notion of moral responsibility, which suggests that praise, blame, reward, and punishment are only appropriate when an agent is truly responsible for their choices. A common way to formalize free action is the requirement that an individual could have chosen a different path in a given situation. When a person is physically coerced, they are effectively prevented from exercising this capacity, as their actions are forced by external circumstances rather than their own internal desires or decisions. Because one cannot be held morally responsible for actions that one could not help but perform, physical coercion serves as a clear example of a situation where the necessary conditions for moral accountability are absent.12