Help me refine my opinion on legal killing

Great Debates
1

Prompted by this thread where a mother kills a rapist out on day release.

Up until now, my position has been that while I am opposed to the death penalty being available to the courts, I have no objection to one person killing another in defence of self, others, or property in the heat of the moment.

However, the case in point makes me realise that I need to refine this.

On the one hand, had the woman responded to the rapist’s taunt by pulling a gun and shooting him there and then, I’d have no problem with that. But she went home, got the means to kill him and then did so whereas perhaps she should have gone to the police. But I have considerable sympathy for her. I could argue that she sustained the heat of the moment, but it is stretching things, and where do you draw the line? And what if the original crime had been different? What if it had been Assault? Burglary? Pickpocketting? Arson? Fraud?

Help me out here Dopers.

2

That example is a poor one IMHO. There was no imminent threat to her or her daughter when he made the remark on the street. In fact, there was no threat at all. He was an ass and made remarks he shouldn’t have, but it’s not like he said he was planning on doing a little raping later.

Don’t get me wrong. I have zero sympathy for him and would have a tough time convicted the woman for what she did. But, I gotta side with the law on this one.

If there is an imminent threat to my loved ones or myself, I believe I am perfectly justified to kill.

3

I can see how it could be seen as an imminent threat.

4

How so? The daughter wasn’t right there. There were many other options the woman could have used that would have put her daughter out of harm’s way.

My understanding is that she’s cuckoo, but that aside, how do you figure “imminent?”

5

We’re getting side-tracked, but I said I could see how it could be seen as imminent, not that I thought it was imminent. Protection of one’s children is very much a primal urge, isn’t it?

Aha! That actually helps a lot.

6

Well, it is to an extent. The girl is no longer a child. The girl wasn’t in the vicinity. This was an act of (insane) rage; not a primal response to danger.

7

I’m with Kalhoun. Use “imminent” and “reasonable person”. If you’ve got time to go home, you have time to call the police and involve the justice system in the problem.

8

Imminent threat is more or less synonymous with the “heat of the moment” notion that you put forth in the original post. It’s my (non-lawyerly) understanding that it’s more of a “right now” deal rather than just a looming or impending threat of something potentially happening soonish.

Also, keep in mind that “imminent threat” is often used as a standard in self defense laws and self defense is always a last resort, so jtgain’s “having time to call the police” point really disqualifies it as an imminent threat.

Anyway, I don’t think there’s any way for the law to excuse what she did – even the “heat of the moment” hypothetical, nor do I think there’s any reasonable way to amend the law to excuse it. However, I do see her as a good candidate for one of the following (based off of the American legal system rather than the Spanish one because that’s what I’m familiar with):

  1. A sympathetic prosecutor offering a plea bargain with minimal or no jail time
  2. A sympathetic juror refusing to convict or convicting on a lesser sentence
  3. A sympathetic judge going for a more lenient sentence
  4. A sympathetic governor pardoning her or commuting her sentence

AFAIK, these are the more or less standard options for weird cases like this that fit the mold of “Yeah, it’s definitely illegal, BUT…”

9

Just because I sympathize with this woman, and probably would have done something similar if I was in her shoes, doesn’t make what she did right.

It is kind of like my approach to the death penalty: If my wife, child, mother, sister, etc. were murdered, I personally would hunt down the murderer and kill him if the police didn’t find him first. That doesn’t mean I didn’t just commit murder myself. I expect the government to rise above the baser human instincts and not commit murder in retaliation.

I know it is a contradiction; everyone holds contradictory views if you look deep enough. Vigilantism is morally wrong, but I can easily see myself becoming a vigilante.

10

I wouldn’t expect the government to sympathize with me. I’d expect that they’d carry out the laws regarding murder. I also would not jeopardize my freedom to avenge a loved one’s death in these circumstances. It doesn’t mean I love my child any less than a vigilante does.

11

Morally you can’t defend such a killing. Legally I imagine there is a claim to be made that the woman was sent into a state of reduced mental capacity due to the shock of seeing her daughter’s rapist on the streets and this lead to her doing something that she would not normally do. I can see this argument as being a justification for a much reduced sentence, and in the United States I wouldn’t be surprised if she was charged with a lesser offense than murder given the difficulty in obtaining a jury conviction against this woman.

Behaving ethically is not easy, and on an emotional level of I can sympathize with acts of revenge–that capacity is within us all. I just hope that if I was ever in that situation I would stay true to my moral principles.

12

I didn’t imply otherwise. You are a better person than I.

I’m not even sure I would stoop to becoming a vigilante. Perhaps I could keep my emotions under control, even if my loved ones were raped, murdered, etc. I’m just saying I sympathize 100% with people like the arsonist in the OP. That still doesn’t mean I condone murder.

13

It’s worth noting that, at least in the article I read about this case that the girl’s mother was said to have been suffering from “mental illness” for some years.

14

I didn’t mean to imply that you implied. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.

15

My take was that her crazy began with the rape and that she couldn’t manage to pull it together, even after the guy was arrested and jailed. She carried the incident with her all these years.

16

Ok, your problem imho here is a disconnect between the needs of an individual and the needs of a society, and understanding that the latter inevitably includes somewhat overlooking the needs of the former.

As a society, we need certain laws and practices enshrined as goods in and of themselves in order to prevent descent into a Hobbesian rule of all: a state of anarchy and emotionalized revenge that we know would in the end only increase suffering, astronomically. But this is sort of a meta-good, rather than a direct one: it lives or dies as a rule for everyone, the shape of an entire society, rather than as something that necessarily makes sense in every individual situation.

So in this case we have a case in which a man has done something abhorrent and obviously is, at least at the moment he said it, displaying little remorse or at least some bitterness and nastiness for everyone involved in his punishment and suffering (which, if we are fair, cannot be discounted either: being in jail is a miserable thing, regardless of what you did). The poor mother interprets this as having no remorse at all, and kills him in order to assuage both her conscience (instinctively fearing that such a beast may rape again) and her sense that evil done should show remorse, not glee.

The man dies, and this is, in itself, probably an injustice: for whatever flaws he had for not being anything but grovellingly sorry to the mother for the sufferring he caused (a state which may be caused by his own evil sociopathy, but just as likely could be caused by his own pain and resentment at having been made to suffer so much and for so long), immediate, in the moment cessation of life is probably unjust.

But the problem is that we are not beings who can viscerally accept being a part of a society of laws. We have moral feelings and feelings of revenge and protection that are primal, and a system of laws is a higher order thing that only really makes sense in the long term, in the big picture. So we are at war here, in our natures, between feelings of payback and abhorrence and feelings of what is good in the long run.

The refined idea here is that I don’t think you SHOULD, ever, expect to feel okay about either side of this controversy. If you are a good moral human being, then this situation SHOULD make you feel uncomfortable, and unfortunately, is it one that probably SHOULD leave you with a sense of upset that has no true resolution. Because it IS an uneasy bargain that we’ve made, as members of a society but also as emotional beings. These two things cannot be cleanly reconciled, and that is going to cause you, a moral caring being, unresolvable stress. We’re inevitably talking a trade-off here, and either prong of the dilemma is going to hurt someone. And as a being of empathy, that is not ok with you: that is not “Pareto optimal” or ultimately acceptable for someone that wishes for a perfect world.

17

I don’t really have any conceptual problem with the idea of stretching the heat of the moment to a great length as in this case. Extremely disturbing ideas and emotions have a way of sticking in the mind, painfully and irretrievably in some cases. The fact that they require SOME logical thinking (which is what courts generally look at when considering mental defect defenses) unfortunately does not mean that EVERY aspect of a person’s thinking was necessarily logical or taking into account the full measure of the implications of some act.

The sad reality of the human psyche is that it very easily compartmentalizes: does some things that are rationally following from point A to B, but also not always making other connections, especially the sort of higher order moral connections that a jury might make when sitting in judgment of the woman’s acts and trying to be realistic about her “state of mind.”

18

That’s a very good point.

19

(Not a bump)

I’d like to thank Dopers for their thoughts. I still consider TooSchoolforCool’s point most pertinent.

20

Nitpick : Spain using a civil law system, I suspect none of the first three options would be possible (no plea bargain, a single juror couldn’t prevent conviction, a judge wouldn’t decide on the sentence) and would have to be replaced by a sympathetic jury acquitting or handing a more lenient sentence.