Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Revenge? Justice?
This will not be an easy post to read. If you're looking for something light and happy, move along.
So, when is something an act of revenge and torture? And when is it a simple act of justice?
A doctor can remove your hand to save you from death by gangrene, or a doctor can remove your hand as a state-sanctioned punishment. What is the difference?
I'm going to be very up-front about my bias here: my father was murdered, and were it up to me his killer would have been put to death just as soon as there was no reasonable doubt that he was guilty of the crime. That's a simple hankering after revenge. I also think that there is a legitimate case to be made that it makes sense for the State to execute murderers, but that's not what I want to talk about here. Rather I just mention this so you know where my bias is.
A man blinds a woman who has rejected his offer of marriage. Does it with acid. What punishment does he deserve? Can you envision being blinded with acid could be a legitimate, state-sanctioned punishment? Now wait, there's more to the story:
Late last month, an Iranian court ordered that five drops of the same chemical be placed in each of her attacker's eyes, acceding to Bahrami's demand that he be punished according to a principle in Islamic jurisprudence that allows a victim to seek retribution for a crime. The sentence has not yet been carried out.
The implementation of corporal punishments allowed under Islamic law, including lashing, amputation and stoning, has often provoked controversy in Iran, where many people have decried such sentences as barbaric. This case is different.
Yes, it is different. The usual sentence under the law is for the offending person to pay "blood money" compensation to his victim. And in the society where women are not valued as much as men, this penalty can be a small amount - enough so that such acid attacks are on the rise. But there is one way in which men and women are equal under the law: she can demand retribution. In this case, literally an 'eye for an eye'. From the same article:
"At an age at which I should be putting on a wedding dress, I am asking for someone's eyes to be dripped with acid," she said in a recent interview, as rain poured against the windows of her parents' small apartment in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of Tehran. "I am doing that because I don't want this to happen to any other women."
Some officials also said the punishment would be a deterrent.
"If propaganda is carried out on how acid attackers are punished, it will prevent such crimes in the future," Mahmoud Salarkia, deputy attorney general of Tehran, told reporters after the court issued its ruling.
OK, revenge? Justice?
I spent a good deal of time reading about this case, and the reactions that people have to it, over on MeFi. Here's a good comment I want to share:
Cruelty isn't justice.
There is no such thing as justice. Some wrongs, once perpetrated, can never be undone, balanced, or compensated for. Justice is a fiction we permit ourselves to aid in codifying society's response to rule breakers. If we do too little, we live at the mercy of the most brutal among us. If we do too much, we become the most brutal among us. So we try to find a middle ground, and we call that justice, and try to forget that there is no magic formula for deterring violence or relieving the victims of cruelty. A cruel and brutal response to cruelty and brutality absolutely can and does continue the cycle. Unfortunately, a measured and merciful response to cruelty and brutality doesn't necessarily break the cycle, either. So we aim for whatever measure of consistency best helps us sleep at night. And as always, your mileage will vary.
And here's an excerpt from another:
Laws are a citizen's primary education in justice, and Shari'ah is quite clear. Women living under Shari'ah are second-class citizens from the perspective of testimony, inheritance, marriage, and divorce. Two female witnesses are needed to convict one man, a woman inherits half of what her brother will receive, Muslim women may not marry non-Muslim men, but Muslim men may marry non-Muslim women, (plus polygamy is allowed but not polyandry,) and men may initiate a divorce but women may not.
Is it any surprise that men who grow up with such laws would sometimes choose to destroy the face of their beloved? Shari'ah law enforces a sexist double standard that disadvantages women, and so everyone treats them as disadvantaged. Such legal standards have a strong educative effect: they persuade citizens of their justice because they are backed by the tripartite authorities of tradition, the state's allegedly justified violence, and God's Word. Yet within that tradition, from the position of an authorized jurist, and with the backing of an alternative interpretation of Scripture, there are plenty of nuances and interpretive freedoms that would allow a jurist to steer Shari'ah towards more progressive ends.
The one place where women aren't supposed to be unequal is in regards to their equality before Allah. Thus, in matters of retribution, they deserve the same protections that a man would receive. Unfortunately, so many of the other procedural inequalities don't really allow that, which is why this seemingly barbarous punishment is the best way to achieve equal procedural consideration for women and men: the question before the court was equality or patriarchy, and it has chosen equality. Equality, in this case, means judicial blinding.
Without laws that are basically fair and equitable, how can we expect citizens to relate to each other as equals? And without equality, how can there be an end to the acid, for both victims and perpetrators?
There's a lot to make you think - and think hard - in that thread, about what is the nature of justice and revenge. We make the assumption now that jail time is the appropriate form of punishment for almost all serious crimes, fines for lesser ones. But those forms of punishment do not hit all equally, nor do they really seem to work particularly well. Then add in the layer that in this situation, in this country, a woman getting equal treatment under the law is actually progress.
As I said, I have a bias. I am of the opinion that there are many crimes which when committed, place one outside the usual humane treatment of society (as an aside, that's what the term "outlaw" actually used to mean - that you were outside the protection of the law, and could be attacked and even murdered without legal retribution.) If you do thus-and-such, you no longer deserve to be treated humanely. Murder, torture, maiming - these are such crimes, as far as I am concerned. I'd have no problems at all with the punishment of blinding by acid for what this man did.
But I'm not sure I'd want our society to function that way.
So, revenge? Justice?
Both?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to my blog.)
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My take...
I've posted a response on my blog.
- No More Mr. Nice Guy!
Whew!
I've been pretty heavy on this thread, and I'm about out of gas on it. But one more thing came to mind. Something in the vein of punishment that pisses me off:
Cops can get away with just about anything.
For instance, there was a case a few years ago and not far from me where two cops started blazing away at a car fleeing a traffic stop. A college kid coming around the corner of a building and unaware anything was going on, walked right into one of the bullets, and died.
Was there punishment? Even a trial? Even a charge of negligence or something like that? Nope. Nothing.
Far as I know, the guy is still on the force, still allowed to carry a gun. Hell, he's probably gotten two raises since then.
In a different story, our local CHIEF OF POLICE, along with his wife, was a crack user and dealer. They did eventually get charged, several years after he retired, and there was a trial. Last I heard, he got three years, she got nothing. Will he serve the entire three years? I doubt it. Has any other convicted crack dealer in this area gotten a mere three-year sentence? I doubt it.
And of course it goes beyond this one guy. Is it possible for the chief of police to be a crack user and dealer, for years, and have nobody else know about it? No. Is it possible that no other cops knew about it? No. But has anybody else (other than the chief's own drug mule) been charged or convicted? No.
Which leads into another of my ideas about Justice. Justice means fairly applying the rules to everybody. Nodody gets special treatment. Not specially good treatment for princes, and not specially bad treatment for peasants.
(If anything, I feel that the people who are most trusted, the ones in the best position to really know and understand the rules, should pay for betraying that trust with somewhat more harsh treatment.)
Theory vs. Practice
There are certainly crimes for which it seems the appropriate punishment is death (maybe even maiming or torture). However, the power to decide on and carry out those kinds of punishments is too great a power to put in the hands of the state. In fact, from a practical standpoint, no one can be given this kind of power or authority by the law - there will always be unfairness or outright corruption in its application.
When it comes to governments and laws, we really have to think "big picture". What do we want the function of government and law to be? Government needs to be wielding the minimal amount of power necessary to provide people the opportunity to live in peace, freedom, and security. Some laws make bigger problems than they solve, as do some punishments. I believe execution, torture, and maiming fall squarely into that category.
Good responses from everyone so far
Very thoughtful, good responses from everyone so far, have really enjoyed reading this post and its commentary. I'd feel comfortable having any of you on a jury tasked with evaluating my guilt or innocence if I were ever unlucky enough to be charged with a criminal offense.
On the lady in Iran, I've heard about this case and I have mixed feelings myself. Part of me says, why not, "eye for an eye", literally, and for the potential deterrence value for male-dominated Iranian society. On the other hand the other part of me says "yeah, but we could never allow that here, it'd be unconstitutionally 'cruel and unusual' in the extreme...so 10-15 years in the pokey, a heavy fine, and the woman is clear to sue the bastard in civil court for all he's worth".
I remember seeing a TV news story about an enraged father who shot the man who sexually molested his son; this was back in the 1980s...no question of the father being the one who fired the fatal shot, it was caught live on TV, very graphic, point-blank range from a phone booth in an airport, as I recall. The jury refused to indict him for murder and I think sentenced him for manslaughter instead. Or they might've let him walk, I don't remember the details. Our Jury system, imperfect as it is, is an important component of our criminal and civil justice system. DA's tend to go for the maximum punishments allowable by law; Juries don't have to agree. But vindictive juries can be checked by appellate judges after the fact.
I recently listened to an Alan Dershowitz lecture where he talked about how he's frequently asked can he, as a defense attorney, defend a client he knows is factually guilty? His response was an unreserved yes; He said that in his opinion probably 80%-90% of all accused persons are factually guilty...and what a good thing that is, because would you really want to live in a society where it was less than that, where truly, factually innocent people are nevertheless prosecuted regularly? What matters is that every client is entitled to a rigorous defense, and that the state must always prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Justice is not purely vengeance, but avenging wrongdoing is one of the elements of justice, and inescapably so, I think.
Also, to respond directly to Hank's earlier post:
"Anyway, in the U.S. at least, I don't have the right to kill people. You don't have the right to kill people."
What, pray tell, is this thing called "Justifiable Homicide", then? In fact we DO have the right to kill in self-defense if we are threatened with death or severe bodily harm.
" If none of us has that right, how is it that we're able to lend it to the government? Answer: We're not."
But we *do* have that right, in the scenario of self-defense individually, and you could extrapolate to "defense of community" in the collective, to stop this cold blooded SOB from ever murdering someone else in the community ever again. It may not deter any other SOB but it will stop THAT SOB, and that's good enough for me.
I don't oppose the death penalty in principle, but, like Kinky Friedman, I do strongly oppose killin' the wrong guy, which has probably happened in Texas more than once over the years.
Hmm.
Not being a lawyer (and generally despising the breed), I can't give any sort of firm legal analysis of it, but I think of "justifiable homicide" as a right to defend yourself, up to and including a degree of vigor that would result in the death of the person attacking. I don't think any part of that translates easily into a "right" to kill.
As to that dreaded "cold blooded SOB," the "never murdering someone else in the community ever again" argument simply doesn't work. The same result can be accomplished, in every case, by putting them in a cage.
Killing the wrong guy, as you mention, has happened plenty of times here in the U.S., and countless times elsewhere throughout history.
I can't help but think of that guy, whoever and wherever he was, every time I run the rationale for the death penalty through my head. What's the difference between being torn to bloody bits on the veldt by a troupe of screaming blood-thirsty baboons, and being put to death by a legal system gone wrong? The difference is that one is over a lot quicker (after which the baboons have something to eat). But then again, it's also that if you put a troupe of screaming blood-thirsty baboons in charge of Justice, the result is a lot more horrifying.
Nope.
OK, this thread has developed well enough in the way I had hoped, so I'll now get into the death penalty debate to some extent. Keeping in mind that I have a self-acknowledged bias, of course.
Nope. If you put someone in a cage, and meet any minimal standards of humane treatment, you still have to house, feed, and clothe that person. And that means that there must be agents of the state interacting with them. There is a very real risk to those agents - real people - both in terms of physical injury (or death) and in terms of damage to their psyche. Someone who is in for murder and already receiving the maximum punishment has very little incentive to behave well.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Crimes of passion and other diminished capacity.
I think you can find the video online (of course) - I found a link to genwi but it didn't punch through. And it's no surprise that what would appear to be a straightforward case of murder gets a lighter sanction because people recognize the high emotional state involved. The French call it crime passionel, a crime impelled by passion and often done in an altered mental state. The classic is the man who is absolved of murder when he comes home to find his wife in bed with another man and kills them both. In the USA, we have applied lesser standards (manslaughter, reduced degrees of murder) to such crimes.
Note the backlash on Ellie Nesler when people learned that her altered mental stage was not just because her son claimed to have been molested by a counselor at a church summer camp, but because she had taken street drugs (I believe methamphetamine) before she acted. Whether it was the late 20th Century version of a couple shots of "courage" or whether she was a habitual user, it diminished the act because she was not fueled merely by the desire to avenge and protect her son.
This is why in common law jurisdictions (such as the USA) there is such a complicated legal system and so many reported decisions, judges, and so forth. While we recognize the bones of the law as stated, we take the time to analyze the situation and, as trilled in The Mikado, to let the punishment fit the crime. When someone acts because of diminished capacity, we believe that the punishment should be similarly diminished.
Hopping off the jurisprudential lectern again..........
The Rules
I mean, wow. Mind-blowingly interesting. Jim, you sure know how to phrase the stumpers.
In my mind, "justice" is something that our enfolding society doles out, imperfectly at the best of times, but usually acceptable to the society at large. "Revenge" however, is something that an individual human takes upon themselves to prosecute upon the guilty party. It is a completely different thing. And very subjective. I mean, individual people make mistakes. Taking your revenge can sometimes backfire on you. What if the person isn't really responsible for the crime? Stranger things have happened. So, you're really just gambling when you take revenge on a person. You can try to be as sure as possible, though, and that mitigates the situation.
I like our system. It's a great way to seek justice, and keep our society chugging along, while suppressing our baser lust for revenge. It allows us to survive as a species. It is a moral system, in the general sense. All of our societies' justice systems are - even those that we do not live in, or subscribe to, even Sharia. (Morality being defined as that set of rules and morays that allow us to live together and survive to produce the next generation of humans - to enable our species to survive.)
However, that is not to say that in specific cases - like if someone were to throw acid in my daughter's eyes - I would not choose to take revenge. Societal morays, justice, and morals can be superseded by individual thinking human minds, if the circumstances warrant it. I will follow the rules as long as they protect me and my family. As soon as they stop, I will take action. Alone, and of my own free will.
Do I need to justify my actions? I don't think so. My actions are mine, for my own selfish reasons. There is no way to justify them in a societal context. They are right for me, but maybe not right for my species, for my society.
Bottom line? I have no problem going to prison, or facing the death penalty because I sought revenge on someone who perpetrated an unspeakable crime against one of my children, or family members. I would be at peace with my decision.
Enlightened? Maybe not. Human?
All too.
Not unlike "Merchant of Venice"
Just doing my part to spread joy and good cheer during this holiday season!
Seriously, thanks to you and everyone else for engaging the topic. Because of my personal bias, I have long known that my response is probably not the best one for society overall. Yet, as you say, it is all too human. The best I have managed to do with my own thirst for revenge is to forget the name of the man who killed my father. It is not forgiveness, but it is as far as I can go.
Thinking about how this particular case in Iran is *their* attempt to reach justice and some satisfactory solution allows us to put things in a different context, perhaps examine our own system and part in it. A few weeks back I watched the Pacino/Irons/Fiennes version of Merchant of Venice, and have been thinking about these issues since. Coming across the discussion over on MeFi brought those musings to another level.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
A little bit of consistency in THAT society
No, I wouldn't want that punishment in our, constitutionally-driven 'justice' system. But it isn't our system, it's their system. Islamic history is full of eyes gouged out for lesser things, like teaching a slightly vanilla-flavored Islam.
For once, maybe for the first time, the 'eye for eye' principle is directed in the defense of women. In a screwed-up system, it's an imperfect step in the right direction.
And it would sure as hell deter others from trying that stunt on their girlfriends.
What is good public policy
Poor woman. She's trapped in a fucked-up culture, and it sounds like she really is trying to make an appropriate choice, given the limited options available to her. In a modern society, where we aren't trapped into blindly following the brutal traditions of ancient nomads, justice should never be about revenge, as much as individual victims and their families may thirst for it.
In this country, the criminal justice system should be designed to protect both society and the rights of criminal defendants. Our Constitution wisely prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. We don't want government officials to get used to treating any people as things which are less than human, not even heinous criminals-to ensure that we are treated with dignity, all should be treated with dignity, at least to the extent possible. So good public policy calls for the removal of violent criminals from society, but for their treatment in confinement to be humane-after all, some of them are actually innocent, and government brutality isn't a deterrent to irrational, violent crime. That doesn't mean a prison should be a five star hotel, but it shouldn't be the ninth circle of hell, either.
That being said, if someone did that to my daughter, I'd volunteer to drip the acid in his eyes. But that doesn't mean I should get to.
Justice vs. Revenge
Care to justify that opinion? You assert it as if it were obvious, but it's not so to me.
Revenge
Revenge is generally about inflicting a proportionate amount of suffering on the person responsible for the victim's suffering. But you can't do that in the US in response to crimes involving extreme brutality because of the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment.
What is justice, anyway?
Justice is a rather abstract concept I've never quite grokked, though I think it close to the concept of fairness.
Speaking of this particular case, I can't see how justice can be achieved in the sense of restitution - the victim can never return to the status quo ante. So far as I can see, the only justice that can be had in this case is retributive.
If retributive justice (revenge) is sought, then any punishment should be proportional to the offense.
So yes, I'd say blinding the assailant and then releasing him would be just, in that the consequence of the assailant's actions on the victim would be reflected upon the perpetrator.
Whether it would be an effective deterrent is open to argument.
That it's cruel is not in doubt.
Possible restitution?
It seems odd to reply to my own comment, but after further thought regarding this case, I want to correct myself, especially after reading Hank's responses below.
I wrote
It occurs to me that, in the case discussed (the blinding), it would a be better outcome to compel the assailant to provide for the medical care and ongoing support for his victim than to merely punish him.
So I was certainly wrong to earlier consider that the only justice could be retributive, because there is certainly room for some form of restitution.
Justice
Off the cuff here, I think Justice is about the same thing medicine is about: healing. It's about getting the best end result given the conditions you're handed. About fixing what's broke as best you can. About reducing the pain as much as humanly possible.
Justice is NOT simply the result of laws or badges. Some of the mean-spirited shit that comes out of our system of cops and courts is not Justice. Nowhere near it.
Justice is the result of thinking, compassionate people attempting to act in the most carefully considered way to maintain a society where the people of that society can achieve some level of peace, safety and freedom from fear.
Justice is about keeping your largest ideals in mind when you make decisions you hope will guide you there.
Someone reading this might immediately think something like "Yeah, tell that to the animals who rob and kill and rape." And my answer to that is: You measure what you think will give you a better future against the best within the best, not the worst within the worst.
If you make your largest decisions based on fear, anger and hate, you create a place where compassion looks like weakness and thoughtfulness and reason come to seem like weeds.
How can Justice can be compassionate?
This is a noble sentiment, but it seems to relate to compassionate societal pragmatism, not to providing deserved consequences for bad actions.
I note Justice (personified) is supposed to be "blind" - i.e. dispassionate, not compassionate.
Still, I did say I don't "get it" - it's a very difficult concept for me. I know that the concept of Karma is but wishful thinking, but boy would it be nice if such existed and we (society) did not have to take its place.
Who amongst us has not been relieved when a wrongdoer in some tale is the subject of poetic justice?
I won't dispute that. But that's not the issue at hand; I already said that, in the case highlighted, the only justice I can see levied is retributive, and such should be dispassionate and proportional to the offense.
It sounds to me like, when you refer to compassion, you're advocating mercy (leniency), but such is surely by definition a lessening of just punishment, and therefore antithetical to true justice.
Nope.
Compassion doesn't mean leniency. It means understanding. Putting yourself in the other's place.
(Okay, well, considering that some of our laws are or have been mean-spirited in the extreme, compassion MIGHT mean leniency, if that translates into not crushing the life out of someone for a very minor crime. Note that this attitude about compassion comes from someone who grew up in a state, Texas, where once upon a time, you could get the DEATH PENALTY for possession of less than an ounce of pot.)
Justice doesn't always mean punishment. It means regaining balance, however that might be accomplished. (And I suddenly understand why the statue of Justice holds a scale.)
My picture of a compassionate Justice is one that always keeps in view the best possible end result. Where victim, the surrounding society AND the victimizer all come out of it in better shape ... or, if it's all you can achieve, the least worse shape.
Say you have a couple of 15-year-old, otherwise law-abiding kids who have vandalized a school. It would be the easiest thing in the world to toss them into prison for 5 or 10 years. Easiest, but also the stupidest and cruelest. In the big picture, you waste the lives of the kids, you damage the surrounding society (these are somebody's children, after all), and you damage the future ... because someday they're going to be let out of prison, onto a society that will have to deal with the shaping forces of 5 years in prison on two children still in the formative stages of their personalities. (And, no small thing, you're going to spend, oh, $30K or so apiece on them each year, just for warehousing, when they could instead be out earning money and supporting themselves.)
Justice, as I see it, would have its eyes on a better end result for all concerned.
And just as an aside, Justice doesn't always equal punishment. If your idea of "true justice" automatically includes punishment, every time, then ... damn. These kids might benefit by more attention, or education, or firmness, or just being assisted to join the local YMCA and inducted into a basketball team. Rather than being sentenced to, say, post-grad work in rape, mugging, and intimidation, with an expert team of professors.
....
I'm sort of expecting that somebody reading this is going to sneer at my fluffy-Disney-bunny picture of kids vandalizing a school as some sort of guide to building a system of compassionate Justice. What about the people who murder and rape and drive down the street howling with laughter while indiscriminately shooting children in playgrounds?
First off, most people are NOT like that, and any system of Justice you build has to realize that treating ordinary people by the same rules by which you punish consciously evil crazies isn't going to give you the best end result for your society. And second ... well, it isn't either-or. Justice can deal gently with juvenile fuckups, and extremely firmly with psychopaths, and still be compassionate in both cases.
There are plenty of places in the world that don't have the death penalty, or torture, or the cutting off of hands, and they seem to get along fine.
Compassion or empathy?
Thanks for the responses, Hank. There's only a couple of points I want to pursue.
I see what you're getting at, but I'd say compassion is a stronger thing than just informed empathy. The sentiment you've expressed seems to correspond to that of the saying "To understand all is to forgive all."
I'd certainly say that justice probably can't be encapsulated into some sort of algorithm that could be mechanically evaluated - there should be a place for human understanding in the process.
I agree with this, with heavy qualifications.
I want to note that I think there's a qualitative difference between offenses against property and offenses against people; I would not want to consider that vandalising a school, say, would be comparable to beating up a student!
I further note there's a quantitative difference between offenses - a slap on the face doesn't compare to a beating, and breaking a window doesn't compare to setting a building on fire.
I would say then that, above a certain threshold of severity, I cannot see how punishment* can fail to be part of justice. What that threshold may be, I will not venture to say...
As an example, let's say A steals from B; then surely merely requiring A to repay the stolen amount from B would be insufficient in itself to constitute justice; but anything further than this must in some sense constitute "punishment" - e.g. a fine or a term of incarceration can be considered punishment.
* Punishment need not be physical, a deprivation of liberty or financial; it may be the withdrawal of some privileges (eg. driver's license).
Oh, yeah ...
I'm against the death penalty, for a reason I've never heard anyone else state:
Democratic societies like ours accept that power comes from individuals. People LEND their power to the government to do jobs they themselves as individuals don't want to do. All the power not lent to the government stays with the individuals. And government has no more power than its citizens lend it. (Yeah, I know it never quite works out like that. But it's what we believe.)
Autocratic societies work by the model that all power rests solely in government, and individuals are allowed by explicit permission of the government the occasional freedom to handle certain aspects of their own lives. In extreme examples, they're not free to do ANYTHING without government permission.
To give a comic-fictionalized example, we're free here in the US to masturbate all we want (in private). It's an innate, unquestionable right.
In Soviet Russia, there were probably forms you'd have to fill out, stating the reasons why you thought you should be allowed the occasional wank. You'd have to go before a board of flinty-eyed, heavy-bosomed Slavic peasant women to plead your case. If you got approval, you'd go to the State-sponsored masturbatorium, a three-hour train ride away, wait in line in the snow for 6 hours for five minutes alone in a small private motel room that smelled like boiled cabbage and had pinups of a slug-pale Janet Reno -- in a thong -- on the walls for stimulation.
(Okay, got carried away there.)
Anyway, in the U.S. at least, I don't have the right to kill people. You don't have the right to kill people. If none of us has that right, how is it that we're able to lend it to the government? Answer: We're not. The state has no right to kill people, because in the democratic philosophy which forms the base of our society, it has no source for that right.
Anyway, in the U.S. at
There's probably a reason you've never heard anyone else state that, Hank ;)
I'm not a Constitutional lawyer, so maybe I'm off base here, but I believe our government derives its powers from the Constitution. Individually, we help decide who gets to wield those powers, but deciding specifically what powers the government has was decided long ago by our Forefathers. On rare occasions, changes to those rules can be made, but that's a completely different story.
I support the death penalty, in certain cases. I'm also not opposed to "eye-for-an-eye" punishment, and if it's to be called "revenge" instead of "justice", I guess I'm okay with that too. I want to believe it can be a deterrent to crime, but I'm not naive enough to think it will always work. But I also am not naive enough to think we can change the minds of those brutal thugs who take advantage of weaker people with "love" and "understanding."
I think there are certain people who, for whatever reason, are going to murder, torture, rape, etc, and no threat of punishment (or promise of non-punishment) will change what they do. No understanding and compassion will change it either. I don't think a state-sanctioned execution perpetuates the cycle like that one blogger wrote; these people do what they do for their own reasons, and it has nothing to do with how society treats others like them.
These are people who should be taken out of society, and even imprisonment is too close to society for my liking. In prison, they are in a comfortable (for them) environment, and can terrorize the tax accountant who was wrongly put away for embezzlement (or some such).
Killing a brutal murderer may not deter another brutal murderer (though it could affect someone who's on the brink of a crime of passion), but it could save some anguish for people who would otherwise be the victims of him.
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
Agreed.
I agree about the Constitution being the legal document that underlies the functional power of government.
But the philosophy that underlies the Constitution, the body of concepts that led to it being the way it is, clearly recognizes the rights of the individual, the "consent of the governed," as the source of government power. The U.S. government itself was formulated and formed by citizens. Philosophically at least, the U.S. government has no power that isn't granted to it by its citizens.
It's that way in the real world too, when you think about it. A government CAN'T have any power that isn't granted to it by its citizens, because government doesn't even really exist -- it's a fiction, a large-scale game, most of us buy into. It's only effective because most of us believe in it, and act as if it's real.
You don't have to totally buy into that game, of course. Criminals prove the point every day, but even a lot of regular people rediscovered that fact during Prohibition, and many of us continue today to not play the game with drug laws, tax laws, immigration laws, etc.
Come to that, the jokers in the Bush White House are some of the foremost examples of people not buying into the rules or substance of government. Certainly they haven't given a hoot about the Constitution.
Hank, that's absurd.
Neither do you have the right to imprison or kidnap people.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Hmm.
I guess I think of the "right" of the government to imprison people as an extension of the private right to defend yourself. (Which statement suddenly gives me a new thought about the source of the power behind the death penalty. I still don't support it, but I'm thinking, I'm thinking.)
And I'm not sure how you mean "kidnap." I don't see that as a justifiable function of government.
Really?
What else do you call it when the police show up to someone's door and arrest them on an outstanding warrant, then haul them away until the ransom (in the form of 'bond') is brought? It's government kidnapping someone.
I'm glad you're thinking - that was the intent of my post, to get people to step outside our preconceived notions about justice and punishment. We all grow up thinking that our system is the only right one.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
It's all a matter of context
I realized recently that one of the things missing from discussions of this type is the difference between The Societal and The Personal.
If someone causes the death of your child, you're SUPPOSED to want to kill them. It's a perfectly natural, subjective, PERSONAL response to that sort of thing. It's a thing to be neither ashamed of nor feared.
But in the SOCIETAL case, where someone else's kid has gotten killed, most of us want the situation carefully examined and judged. Personal revenge is too problematic because the one doing it is in an extreme emotional state, and that's when we're least rational.
There was a case in the news just recently (was it one of our posts here?) about a woman who shot and killed the ACCUSED molester of her son, right in the courthouse. Reading the stories, I first felt like maybe the benefit of the doubt could rest slightly in her favor, but later details made her seem like some kind of trailer trash criminal lowlife herself. In the end, I'd much rather have left the thing up to the court than to have her murdering somebody, however outraged she personally felt. (Her son turned out to be a thug later, too, getting sentenced to prison at the age of 23 for stomping to death a guy doing yard work. Was it the molesting that caused him to do that, or was it, as I suspect, Mommy's role model?)
Of course, if it got personal, if somebody threw acid in the eyes of my daughter or sister, or even my dog, I'd want a waffle-head framing hammer and a few minutes with his shoes off, before he went in for the acid drip.
... but even having said that, I wouldn't want to live in a society that would let people -- me included -- do that.
Dripping acid into someone's eyes ...? Just seems like more of the barbaric shit that flows all too often out of the toxic sludge which is Islam.
Easy answer: I'd be against it.
Hank, you probably heard
Hank, you probably heard news reports of the death of Ellie Nesler, who shot the man accused of molesting her son, among others, at a church summer camp.
The "eye for an eye" bit comes from the first set of laws handed down according to the Bible, in Exodus. In Deuteronomy, the explanation is given that this is to deter criminals or remove the most evil ones from society.
Now, contrary to what people think - this idea of "eye for eye" and so on did not originate with the Hebrews. While some of the Laws are specifically for them, others existed already in other sets of laws such as the Code of Hammurabi, while other codes provided that so many pieces of silver must be paid in compensation. I don't find a lot of records of what happens when the person isn't able to pay that sum.
In the Quran, Muslims are urged to accept blood money or other compensation instead of the literal penalty, as a way of wiping out their own sins. I find it interesting that the woman isn't taking that out, but the more dangerous one of insisting upon retribution.
What bothers me in some of the clips that Jim quotes, more than the physical damage being inflicted to both parties, is how the speakers glibly blame Shar'ia for the woman's injury. Anybody who believes that has never seen the damage inflicted upon women in the USA by men who claim to love them. Bullies are bullies, cowards are cowards, and they come in all religions. This is not the first time a man has burned a woman with acid, and it won't be the last. As the Pugashes' story shows, it happens in the USA, too.
I'm not standing up for anybody, except possiblty Ameneh Bahrami who was brave enough to insist that Islamic law be followed, and her attacker not allowed a convenient out. Whether it acts as a deterrent to others who would similarly injure women is anybody's guess. But it would be nice to see that men who hurt women simply because they can, and only to make themselves feel better, stronger, more powerful, whatever, almost as if it were a form of self-medication, could be prevented from ever doing so again. And held up as disfigured examples of what would happen to other men who try the same things.
Teacher's jumping off her soapbox now - I could get a lot more pedantic on legal systems and the authority of government to do what individuals may not. I can do that lecture too, if wanted.
Ah.
Ellie Nesler, yes. And the shooting was something that happened years ago. And yeah, the story was in the news because she just died.
"An eye for an eye" justice
"An eye for an eye" justice is something we should have outgrown. I'm fairly certain that even if some dude offed my entire family, I wouldn't require his death. In what way is death a punishment? Life in prison, now *there's* a punishment. John Walker Lindh fights on the losing side of a war and ends up in the federal prison in Florence, Colorado where people are locked in solitary confinement 23 hours out of the day. Now *that's* a punishment. The only logical reasons to engage in capital punishment--well, there aren't any logical reasons--they're all emotional.
Just out of curiousity,
did you even read my post? Or was it TL;DR - HTCA (had to comment anyway)? Because while what you say may well be true, it seems to miss the point entirely.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.