You hear a lot of news stories about various sociopaths who commit serial or mass murder. In general, despite the emotional responses they evoke, I think that there’s no compelling rationale for executing them: in a modern state, we have the wherewithal to prevent them from doing further harm in the world by locking them up forever. (If you disagree with this idea in general, that’s fine, but let’s not please rehash that debate in this thread; I’d like you to stipulate it so that we can discuss what comes next).
What comes next is Robert Bales, yet another sociopath who committed mass murder in Afghanistan. And in this case, we can foresee a clear result of not executing him: if he’s given life without parole, there will almost certainly be reprisal murders against US citizens from furious grieving Afghans. And no wonder–if there were an occupying army in the United States, and if a member of that foreign army went and murdered some US citizens, there’d be similar reprisal murders.
In this case, then, a consequence of not executing him is that more people will die.
If he were innocent, then sure, it’d be worth the principle of the thing not to execute him, we’re not monsters who will sacrifice an innocent life to save others.
But he’s not innocent, almost certainly. And I, as a general opponent of the death penalty, wonder if this should be an exception. Why should my friend, a marine in Afghanistan, have to face increased risk to his life just so this murderer may stay alive?
I don’t have clear answers. What do other opponents of the death penalty think–is there ever cause for exceptions, and if so, is this such a case?
I’m not a death penalty opponent, so maybe I’m not fit to answer, but if we don’t execute him, and there are reprisal murders, isn’t that up to the Afghans? The reprisal murders, if they happen, will be because the Afghans who commit them chose to commit them. So any moral responsibility for those murders would be on the Afghans, not on the US government.
Maybe, maybe not; from the viewpoint of the Afghans, just how much difference is there between what he’s alleged to have done and what we do all the time there anyway? Does “collateral damage” care why they are killed?
And then there’s the main reason I oppose the death penalty; I don’t trust the system that much, especially when it comes to the death penalty. There have been reports of other people being involved; the death penalty being applied in his case would to me smell like part of a cover up, with the scapegoat being executed.
I’m generally pro-death penalty in appropriate cases. This particular case may not be an appropriate case for the death penalty. I expect that strong mitigating evidence of diminished capacity resulting from his prior head injury will be presented. That evidence may be enough to outweigh the aggravating factors presented by the prosecution. If so, then the death penalty would not be appropriate under our law.
We must not deviate from our law out of fear of criminal acts by third parties.
Has he been diagnosed as a sociopath? Has a trial been held? I haven’t seen that yet. Are you really suggesting we should execute someone because if we don’t others will kill more innocent people. WTF? Gah, I hate what this guy did and wish it didn’t happen, but dear lord can we not go off the deep end before the trial?
No. No exceptions, and I wouldn’t be tempted to make one here. If I’m against capital punishment to satisfy “our” desire for revenge, I’m not going to think it’s OK to do it to satisfying someone else’s.
We bear responsibility for anyone we kill, including this guy. Angry Afghanistanis bear responsibility for anyone they kill. The argument that we should kill this guy because if we don’t, someone else will kill people is the kind of moral bankruptness that I expect from an episode of 24, and has no place in real life.
No, of course not. That way madness lies.
There were reprisals and deaths over the burning of a book so should we have offered to sacrifice those responsible?
Which is all well and good–except that if my friend in Afghanistan is murdered by one of those barbarians in a reprisal killing, he won’t be any less dead, and no level of moral smugness over not having executed Bales will bring him back to life.
In general I oppose the death penalty not because of what it does to the murderer, but because of what it does to us. In this case, what it might do to us is to keep more of us alive; and in such cases, my opposition to the death penalty wavers.
Dissonance, I guess I’ll mail back my “anti-death-penalty” badge, then, because that sure is a meaningful argument.
My reasons for rejecting the death penalty is simply that I don’t think any government has ever shown anything which would convince me that it deserves the ability to kill its own citizens. I think death is a perfectly acceptable response to the shit people do, especially in e.g. self-defense circumstances. But the government doesn’t deserve that power. But, European peer pressure hasn’t convinced us to wholly abandon it, and righteous indignation hasn’t forced us to universally apply it, so I don’t know why we’d buckle under Afghan pressure.