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I'll grant you a major point here, one that is hard to refute. I'm familiar with the principle and agree with it to a great extent. I've grappled with this at great length on a personal level but still conclude capital punishment has its place. Outside of capital crimes, there are other violations of the principle. I recall recently (would need to google it to find the specific case to which I am referring) where a guy in his late 50s finally had a conviction tossed out because he was proven innocent. I can't recall the length of his imprisonment but it was over half of his life. Another one, this guy a younger guy in his late 20s, was convicted of rape and only all these years later was his conviction tossed when his accuser admitted she falsified the accusation. This one was a college athlete with NFL potential and her accusation cost him a shot at playing in the NFL.
I raise this point because, if we're willing to toss out the death penalty on the Blackstone Formulation then we need to be willing to do so in non capital incarcerations as well. In both of the examples I mention innocent men had their lives changed forever by a flawed system and a dishonest accuser. Time is something one never gets back, and using your point about being unable to undo what's done, you still have the same problem: it's not like the state can restore all that time lost to the exonerated individual. Would it not be better to allow guilty men to walk free than to have these innocent men sit in jail for crimes they did not do?
It's hard to answer yes or no consistently to both capital and non-capital. There are a lot of flaws in the system. I consider myself able to think critically about this stuff but by no means do I claim to have a definitively right solution to the problem.
You're right, releasing a person who has served decades for a crime he didn't commit, you can't give him that lost time back, even the millions settlements they usually get can't undo what has happened, but at least they do get something. And I do believe that our presumption of innocence and burden of proof on prosecution reasonable doubt standard do provide some protection, but we aren't doing the best we can. The adversarial nature of law, which is there by design, is part of the problem. I think that defense attorneys, yes, they should always be about the adversarial process, but balancing that with adversarial DAs is wrong. The system shouldn't be balanced, it should always be tilted towards innocence, that is the point of presumption of innocence and burden of proof on prosecution. The problem is now prosecutors aren't about finding out whether someone is innocent or guilty, they are about trying to win a guilty verdict whenever they can, because their win/loss record is how ADAs get promoted, how DAs get reelected. Finding out that a defendant is actually innocent and revealing that to the judge and defense is against their self-interest. A large number of people who were exonerated got their new trials because it was found that the prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense in their first trial. We talk about the prosecutor's duty to produce discovery, but the prosecutor has wide latitude to use his own judgement to decide what is and is not exculpatory evidence, and the prosecutor only has to produce for discovery the evidence he determines is exculpatory or plans to present in court. Something that he "decides" isn't exculpatory but doesn't help his case either, that may never be seen by the defense. And prosecutors don't have to produce discovery until a defendant has entered a not guilty plea and a trial date has been set (often defense attorneys don't get the DA's full case file until 48 hours before the trial starts). A lot of later-exonerated people (most of them poor and poorly educated, and relying on overworked public defenders) are bullied into taking a plea deal for a crime they didn't commit to avoid the risk of a much longer sentence, or a death sentence - and all the time the police and the DA were sitting on potentially exculpatory evidence. We don't need to stop all incarcerations, we need to just fix all this. And we need to reform mandatory minimum sentencing rules.
I admit, when I see cases of extreme, grisly murders, or acts of terrorism, my first impulse at times has that the perpetrator should be strung up in public, or worse. I've had momentary "we should just bomb that country into the stone age lapses." But I remember, even in cases I feel "deserve" brutal punishment, what Tolkien wrote: "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." I also remember my Kant: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."Especially with terrorists, some of them have seen the indefensible things that US foreign policy has done overseas, and believe we "deserve" punishment for it. If we as individuals, as a criminal justice system, as a nation go around meting out the death we believe this or that person or group "deserves", are we any better?
I'm confused, you state that you are not making a legal claim, but you say you laid out these arguments in a thread entitled "organ donation should be compulsory". Compulsory indicates enforcement, usually legal, to compel someone to do something. Like compulsory education.And in this thread, the OP did not indicate they were restricting the argument to moral justification. I think it is also "right" to consistently apply the principles underlying the rule of law as laid down in case law.
By "I'm not making a legal claim," I meant that I wasn't claiming that my proposal was currently legal or could be supported by case law.
I don't think case law comes with a moral imperative. As a practical matter, it is useful for our society to know what to expect in court, and case law is a great indicator of that. But that doesn't mean we can't change laws. We do it all the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reefmonkey
It is an established standard that individual rights can only be infringed when there is a compelling public interest to do so. Absolutely making sure bodies are properly interred so that disease is not spread is a compelling public interest, but that doesn't negate the obligation of the state to accomodate a person's beliefs to the fullest extent possible while doing so. And I would say there is a significant moral issue involved in causing people distress through knowing they live in a society where their deeply held spiritual beliefs about the importance of the integrity of the body to their immortal soul will not be respected. I get into this in more detail in the next paragraph.
Whose rights are being infringed? You don't have a right to know what will happen to your body after death. You don't exist after death, so it is impossible to infringe on your rights.
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Originally Posted by Reefmonkey
I agree that my dead body is not me. I have no sentimentality about what happens to my body after I die. After any useable tissues are harvested, as for what happens to the rest of me - surprise me. However I still respect the fact that other people see things differently, often based on deep spiritual convictions. I believe that religion is all silly superstition, but I still believe in people's right to believe what they want. A person shouldn't be forced to do something that will cause them no material harm during their lifetime but which they believe imperils their immortal soul. Living in a country where they know things can be done to their body after death that would cause them such jeopardy is at the very least causing them harm through distress.
Maybe it will cause them harm through distress. But I don't think that knowing what will happen to your body after death is implied by freedom of religion, and I don't think a strong case can be made that we have a right to force other people to do a certain thing with our bodies when we no longer exist. That would be a very peculiar right. Moreover, there is a compelling public interest here: 7,000 people die in the US every year because they didn't get the organ transplant they needed due to a shortage of usable organs.
It would violate the last of any sanctity we reserve for the dead. This idea approaches death with a looter's mentality - like when a player dies in a video game and his goods are dispersed, or eyeing the assets of someone to whom you are a beneficiary.
We shouldn't have sanctity for the dead. Our moral regard for anyone stems from the fact that the person can have experiences -- both positive and negative. There are ways their lives can go well or poorly. The dead have no experiences. We should show them no more regard than we do a pile of rocks.
As others have pointed out, and firmly placing myself in the camp of not ascribing to a system of stone age superstition, this flies in the face of religious beliefs and the right to hold them, regardless of how ridiculous they are. Catholics (and many other xtians) proscribed cremation because they believe if you don't have an intact body you will miss out when the last trump is sounded - eg when the Last Days come you won't be bodily taken up into heaven. Amongst a whole plethora of ridiculous beliefs, this has always struck me as particularly ridiculous. So if you die in a fire and your body cannot be recovered, no Resurrection for you! Or if you were injured in life and lost a limb or were blinded, when you are resurrected, it will be sans the limb and still blind.
Catholics are now allowed to be cremated but the ashes are MANDATORILY to be buried in "holy ground". You can't scatter them. I hate to think what happened to all the bodies that were long long past recovery when a church was razed and the graves had to be moved for construction of a highway or what have you. I mean, they're gone within a few years. I'm sorry but if God can do ANYTHING it won't matter where your arm was disposed of or how thoroughly your body rotted into the ground - or, for that matter, whether or not you were cremated and the ashes scattered.
BUT. That is their belief and refusing to allow them to act on it as relates to the dead bodies of their fellows while still supposedly allowing them to hold and teach that belief is just ... well, cruel for one thing. And a violation of the right to believe as you choose without government interference (as long as that belief harms no one, so starting up the Aztec First United Church and then slaughtering your neighbors on the smoking altars of your church would not be allowed).
Whose religious beliefs would be violated here? It can't be the dead person's because dead people don't have religious freedom rights. That person doesn't exist at all anymore, so it makes no sense to say they have anything. Is it the family's rights? I don't think so. Religious rights grant you non-interference in practicing your religion. They don't grant you the right to do any certain thing with someone else's body.
Of course religious people would be upset. But that doesn't mean there is actually someone whose rights are being violated.
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Originally Posted by Pyewackette
The vast majority of dead people have living relatives who care what happens to the body because of deeply held religious beliefs. No matter how ridiculous those beliefs, they still have rights as pertains to the disposition of said body.
Where do these rights come from? I'm a bit unclear on whether you are claiming these are current legal rights (our law grants these currently) or basic human rights, like the right to freedom of speech or the right to life, liberty, etc. If it's simply legal rights, maybe. I am not making an argument about what is currently legal. But if it's the second one, I disagree completely. Insofar as we have any natural rights, they are almost certainly the right to non-interference in various ways. This right would be unlike any other right, and I can't see the justification for it.
With that said, 1.6% over that span (I imagine those numbers have adjusted some in the 14 years since) isn't enough to convince me. You don't make policy based on outliers.
I think this is madness. You're saying that if 1.6% of the people on death row are actually innocent, and we kill them, that those considerations aren't significant enough to convince you that we should just give them life sentences instead?
Given that there are very real, sufficient alternatives, like life in prison, I can't say I agree. Killing innocent people so the victims of crimes can feel better doesn't seem like justice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reefmonkey
It's Blackstone's Formulation - "it's better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent person suffer."
I agree with your overall view here, but I don't agree with Blackstone's Formulation. If those ten guilty persons are likely to kill again, more innocent people end up dying than if the one innocent person had suffered.
I supposed this is all really just a trolley problem in disguise, but as a consequentialist, I don't recognize a difference between locking up or killing an innocent person who is wrongly convicted and allowing an innocent person to be killed by letting a guilty person go free.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iknowftbll
As I stated, I don't get into the deterrent debate. The death penalty is a punishment, not deterrent.
From my perspective, this is your problem. We shouldn't be involved in punishment. We should be involved in protecting society. Our overall moral goal in all parts of life should be to maximize some sort of happiness or flourishing and minimize some sort of suffering. We can debate about what exactly we should maximize and what exactly we should minimize, but those are the broad strokes. That applies to our justice system as well. Our justification for locking people up is solely to protect society. If locking a person up doesn't result in more expected happiness or less expected suffering, we have no business doing it. The problem with the death penalty is that it, in nearly every possible case, reduces happiness and possibly increases suffering. We could protect society just as well by giving that person a life sentence, and that person would still get to live. A bonus is that innocent people have more time to be exonerated.
You're right, releasing a person who has served decades for a crime he didn't commit, you can't give him that lost time back, even the millions settlements they usually get can't undo what has happened, but at least they do get something. And I do believe that our presumption of innocence and burden of proof on prosecution reasonable doubt standard do provide some protection, but we aren't doing the best we can. The adversarial nature of law, which is there by design, is part of the problem. I think that defense attorneys, yes, they should always be about the adversarial process, but balancing that with adversarial DAs is wrong. The system shouldn't be balanced, it should always be tilted towards innocence, that is the point of presumption of innocence and burden of proof on prosecution. The problem is now prosecutors aren't about finding out whether someone is innocent or guilty, they are about trying to win a guilty verdict whenever they can, because their win/loss record is how ADAs get promoted, how DAs get reelected. Finding out that a defendant is actually innocent and revealing that to the judge and defense is against their self-interest. A large number of people who were exonerated got their new trials because it was found that the prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense in their first trial. We talk about the prosecutor's duty to produce discovery, but the prosecutor has wide latitude to use his own judgement to decide what is and is not exculpatory evidence, and the prosecutor only has to produce for discovery the evidence he determines is exculpatory or plans to present in court. Something that he "decides" isn't exculpatory but doesn't help his case either, that may never be seen by the defense. And prosecutors don't have to produce discovery until a defendant has entered a not guilty plea and a trial date has been set (often defense attorneys don't get the DA's full case file until 48 hours before the trial starts). A lot of later-exonerated people (most of them poor and poorly educated, and relying on overworked public defenders) are bullied into taking a plea deal for a crime they didn't commit to avoid the risk of a much longer sentence, or a death sentence - and all the time the police and the DA were sitting on potentially exculpatory evidence. We don't need to stop all incarcerations, we need to just fix all this. And we need to reform mandatory minimum sentencing rules.
As much as we've disagreed on this thread and the military thread, there is not a word here with which I disagree.
I think this is madness. You're saying that if 1.6% of the people on death row are actually innocent, and we kill them, that those considerations aren't significant enough to convince you that we should just give them life sentences instead?
Given that there are very real, sufficient alternatives, like life in prison, I can't say I agree. Killing innocent people so the victims of crimes can feel better doesn't seem like justice.
If this is really how you choose to characterize my consideration of the victims' loved ones then I've no further time for you. Unless I'm discussing a completely benign subject altogether I prefer to reserve my comments for intelligent replies only. As much as you bemoan the lack of meaningful debate your word choice is often condescending and void of respect for viewpoints with which you disagree. On a forum where you have the opportunity to read and re-read what you post before hitting "submit" I am inclined to believe that word choice is not an accident. This word choice and the post as a whole ignores the totality of the arguments I've made and distills it down to a few emotionally charged points of objection. You don't have to agree with me to be worth my time, but you do have to show my ideas respect.
Whose rights are being infringed? You don't have a right to know what will happen to your body after death. You don't exist after death, so it is impossible to infringe on your rights.
The majority of religious beliefs are about what happens to you after death, ie, what will happen to your eternal soul after you die, based on your conduct during life. Think of all the religious accomodations not just the government makes, but the government requires private companies to make for people all the time, because the people who are being accomodated think they won't get into heaven after they die otherwise. And most of it is stuff these people will do at other times, just on this or that special day, they can't do it, or else they wont get into heaven. By your logic one could argue you don't have a right to know what happens to your soul after death, because there is no such thing as souls, you don't exist after death, there is no heaven, so it's impossible to infringe on your right to get into heaven.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
Moreover, there is a compelling public interest here: 7,000 people die in the US every year because they didn't get the organ transplant they needed due to a shortage of usable organs.
That's tricky ground to get into, because now you're talking about one individual's duty to provide something of his to another individual. People with leukemia die every year because they either can't find any bone marrow match or get an imperfect match and succumb to graft-host disease. Does this mean we should mandate that every person get tested and put in the registry, and if you're a match for someone, you are required to go through the harvesting process?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
I agree with your overall view here, but I don't agree with Blackstone's Formulation. If those ten guilty persons are likely to kill again, more innocent people end up dying than if the one innocent person had suffered.
I supposed this is all really just a trolley problem in disguise, but as a consequentialist, I don't recognize a difference between locking up or killing an innocent person who is wrongly convicted and allowing an innocent person to be killed by letting a guilty person go free.
I understand where you're coming from here; I don't think Blackstone was really advocating that people we know to be guilty be set free, I think he was using purposeful hyperbole to emphasize the importance of a high standard like "beyond reasonable doubt." I think though this touches on an issue that many Americans don't understand - "beyond reasonable doubt" doesn't mean "beyond any doubt" - it doesn't require absolute certainty. And because most if not all murder cases are going to involve at least some trace or residual doubt, no matter how small (and even if the jury doesn't feel there is any room for doubt, they can and have been wrong), it's better to always impose a punishment that is at least partially reversible - especially when the irreversible punishment does not provide any protective benefits to society above those provided by the reversible punishment. And I know I'm preaching to the choir with you on this, but it's still something that should be said.
If this is really how you choose to characterize my consideration of the victims' loved ones then I've no further time for you. Unless I'm discussing a completely benign subject altogether I prefer to reserve my comments for intelligent replies only. As much as you bemoan the lack of meaningful debate your word choice is often condescending and void of respect for viewpoints with which you disagree. On a forum where you have the opportunity to read and re-read what you post before hitting "submit" I am inclined to believe that word choice is not an accident. This word choice and the post as a whole ignores the totality of the arguments I've made and distills it down to a few emotionally charged points of objection. You don't have to agree with me to be worth my time, but you do have to show my ideas respect.
I don't see how I am not showing your ideas respect, and I don't see how anything I said was emotionally charged. Are you not arguing that we are justified in killing the 1.6% of death row people who are innocent because the families of the victims of the crimes committed by people on death row will feel better/get closure? I guess I don't see how I've mischaracterized your view. Do you not think "feel better" means something like "get closure"?
The majority of religious beliefs are about what happens to you after death, ie, what will happen to your eternal soul after you die, based on your conduct during life. Think of all the religious accomodations not just the government makes, but the government requires private companies to make for people all the time, because the people who are being accomodated think they won't get into heaven after they die otherwise. And most of it is stuff these people will do at other times, just on this or that special day, they can't do it, or else they wont get into heaven. By your logic one could argue you don't have a right to know what happens to your soul after death, because there is no such thing as souls, you don't exist after death, there is no heaven, so it's impossible to infringe on your right to get into heaven.
Yes, religious beliefs often pertain to what happens after we die. But the accommodations we make for religious beliefs -- and the religious rights we value -- are for living people. We make room for living people's beliefs about what will happen after they die. That is not the same thing as acting a certain way after they have died.
As for the "right" to know what happens to one's soul after death. Does such a right exist? I don't even know how to think about such a thing. Do humans have an actual right to know what will happen to their souls after death? Where did this right come from, and who is doing the informing here?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reefmonkey
That's tricky ground to get into, because now you're talking about one individual's duty to provide something of his to another individual. People suffering from leukemia every year because they either can't find any bone marrow match or get an imperfect match and succumb to graft-host disease. Does this mean we should mandate that every person get tested and put in the registry, and if you're a match for someone, you are required to go through the harvesting process?
But we aren't talking about an individual providing something of his or hers. We are talking about dead bodies. Dead bodies aren't individuals, and it doesn't make sense to say that the organs are "his or hers."
This says nothing about how we should treat living people.
God, I went down every single one of these paths at least ten times in the other thread. I don't know how the distinction between a living person and a dead body is not completely black and white. Treating a dead body a certain way is not in any way analogous to how we treat living people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reefmonkey
I understand where you're coming from here; I don't think Blackstone was really advocating that people we know to be guilty be set free, I think he was using purposeful hyperbole to emphasize the importance of a high standard like "beyond reasonable doubt." I think though this touches on an issue that many Americans don't understand - "beyond reasonable doubt" doesn't mean "beyond any doubt" - it doesn't require absolute certainty. And because most if not all murder cases are going to involve at least some trace or residual doubt, no matter how small (and even if the jury doesn't feel there is any room for doubt, they can and have been wrong), it's better to always impose a punishment that is at least partially reversible - especially when the irreversible punishment does not provide any protective benefits to society above those provided by the reversible punishment. And I know I'm preaching to the choir with you on this, but it's still something that should be said.
I think a better alternative to Blackstone is a risk-adjusted burden of proof. If I'm a juror, I am more likely to convict a person about whom I'm iffy regarding guilt if I think that person has a high chance of re-offending. Some crimes are crimes where you are pretty certain the person would never hurt someone else if they walk free. Some aren't. If it's a case where the person, if guilty, is likely to kill again, I am going to have a lower standard of proof that I work with. I'm fine with ten guilty people walking to save the one innocent person if we are talking about parking tickets. I'm not fine with that if we are talking about mass shooters.
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