And that’s why I invoked the “reasonable person” doctrine.
I guess I’m just more willing than you are to divorce law from morality. I think jury nullification is a good thing, because we, as a society, can and do codify things that are moral and even just, as illegal. I started with a Kevorkian joke, mostly because of the hypothetical “Jack” in the OP, but I also think that Jack Kevorkian was a pretty noble guy.
He believed that an individual has a right to end their life when the potential remainder of it was pain and misery. His litmus test was sound mind and careful consideration, which may not apply to the Jack and Jill story posed by the OP, but his philosophy was that people should have the right to control their own life and their own death. Imminent death and agonizing pain would probably mitigate the careful consideration element.
Kevorkian refused a lot of people who wanted to die. He was a strange guy by anyone’s estimation, but he didn’t get off on people who wanted to die. He helped people who had reason to die, and I applaud him for his efforts. In this hypothetical, Jill had a reason to ask for her death. She was in pain and going to die. Sooner rather than later, after much agony, is humane.
You say you’re not fighting the hypothetical, but you are. As I already said, every aspect of the hypothetical is specified in such a way as to preclude the possibility of survival. The OP asked if fictional Jack was guilty of 2nd degree murder. You answered that he obviously was. Supposing you are correct, that under the letter of the law, Jack was guilty of 2nd degree murder, do you think that would be a just sentence? Would you think that it was fair that Jack serves time in prison for granting the wish of a dying woman in agony to end her pain?
When you say an action is “immoral,” all you are saying is “I don’t like it.” When you say an action is “just,” all you are saying is “I like it.”
So, your two sentences above basically translate into “sometimes I think it is OK for someone to do something even though it is illegal.” Well, OK then, that’s fine, but the law is still the law. If you go over the speed limit, you may get caught and get a ticket, and it doesn’t matter whether you personally think the speed limit should be higher.
Which is why the hypothetical is unanswerable–you are asking me to place myself in a situation that couldn’t possibly exist by definition. It’s like asking “if you found out your father was also your mother, would you still send him flowers on mothers’ day?” It just doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t particularly dislike the sentence, it doesn’t offend me or anything. The dude broke the law, his opinion of the law doesn’t matter (just like how you would still get a speeding ticket even if you think the speed limit should be higher). Part of choosing to live in a society is accepting that we use the democratic process to make laws–any one person’s feelings about the merits of a particular law don’t matter to whether that law will be enforced against him. Jack should lobby to make it not a crime to kill someone in this circumstance if he feels so strongly about it.
So sure, it’s “just” and “fair,” if I must use your terminology (and by saying its just and fair all I am saying is I like it–those words have no meaning beyond that).
No, that’s not my contention at all. There are some laws that I don’t like, and I have broken the law because I chose to (and probably will do so again). And I recognize that the above is the case for other people as well.
What I don’t do is either:
think that the law I don’t like is “immoral” or “unjust” (i.e., that there’s some larger over-arching cosmic wrongness to the law above and beyond my own dislike for it) or
think that I shouldn’t be subject to the penalty for breaking the law if I’m caught.
What do you think about:
3. the law in question fails to adequately cover scenario X, which should not be a crime, but is technically a violation of the law.
I don’t see it as being about liking or not liking the law (who “doesn’t like” murder laws?) It’s about the scenario being inherently non-criminal, but still falling afoul of the law.
Not guilty of second degree murder as I understand it, although that crime has different definitions in different places. I’m here assuming that there’s a necessity for ill will for it to be murder.
That said, it is definitely not justifiable homicide. I’m not sure if assuming things one can’t possibly know about how long an ambulance would take to arrive (as he didn’t call), or how long the victim would live rise to the level of recklessness, but that would seem the most likely charge.
Le sigh. Maybe I’ll answer this later, but right now I just don’t have the energy. Your insistence on using these little meaningless phrases that I then have to unpack to get at something meaningful (i.e., “morally sound”) gets tiring after a while.
They aren’t meaningless, you just insist on converting the plain meaning of words to other words so they can fit in your paradigm. Thus you can never get at the true meaning because you can’t put yourself in the paradigm of others.
You personally don’t accept morality. While I can argue that you are wrong, that is irrelevant here. If you insist on continuing the debate, then you need to learn to think withing a paradigm that is not your own.
In fact, specifically with your lack of belief in an absolute morality, you need to be very good at doing this, as you cannot insist that your way of thinking is right and theirs is wrong. Ironically, you have to accept that believing in an absolute morality is an acceptable way of thinking.
All of that said, Jake Jones, Rand Rover clearly is NOT claiming that the law is inherently moral, so the two of you are talking past each other. He’s trying to translate to your paradigm and completely failing. So allow me.
All he’s saying is that, if you think a law is wrong, you should still expect to possibly be punished for breaking it. To not be punished just because you think the law is immoral would negate the reason laws exist in the first place. I’m sure there are psychopaths out there that don’t think murder is immoral. That doesn’t keep them out of prison.
The only thing he is saying is “just” is this system. Not the law itself, just that it would be “unjust” not to punish someone if they’ve broken the law.
And his answer to your hypothetical is that he just doesn’t know. In his paradigm, neither would I: both actions are things I would dislike. Only my moral code of reducing suffering if possible would allow me to make the choice.
He would probably translate that as that I would dislike allowing the person to suffer more than not killing.
After some consideration, I think I’d vote guilty.
First, he had access to a working phone to call 911, yet chose not to use it until after she was killed.
Second, we only have his word on what happened, how he discovered her, how she pleaded with him, and no evidence to corroborate that self-serving story.
Third, the OP stated that the roads were impassible and “if he had called an ambulance it would have been hours before one could arrive.” Yet, again, Jack never bothered to check that out before committing the act. Further, it has been established that not only did the ambulance but also the police arrived within two hours for what was, at that point, a non-emergency call. So the roads weren’t impassible and they may have arrived sooner had it been an actual emergency.
Finally, the doctor’s testimony of how long Jill may have survived is irrelevant with regards to Jack’s current state of mind at the time of the killing.
It was a long weekend and I hadn’t read your response to my post yet, and since you mention people not explaining their position I thought I would follow up.
I do not believe that either suicide or euthanasia is ever an acceptable response to any situation. Period.
You seem to feel strongly that Jill’s suffering is a cause of great concern, I do not. Life is a wisp of smoke in a gale, a fleeting glimpse of light in a dim room. And if Jill suffers for 2 minutes or 2 hours is of no matter in the long run.
A religious person might say that after she dies her suffering is ended and she reaches her reward. A non-religious person might say that when she dies her essence evaporates back into oblivion.
Either way, ending her suffering does not effect the outcome. Dying only hurts until it’s over, and then it is all over.
I did have a close friend from high school who died of ALS, only took about 8 months from start to finish. He was an athlete and great guy. But ALS does not hurt, it is humiliating while your body shuts down, but it is not a painful death. He died when his lungs quit working and he could no longer breathe.
You seem concerned to end Jills suffering when to my mind her suffering does not matter in the end. Erasing her last few minutes of existance does not improve her life in any way. It is a part of her existance, a bad part, but every second is important.
Her life is all she has got and all she will ever have, let it end on it’s own.
How about the old doctrine of competing harms? He was faced with a choice of letting her suffer for hours and die, or to kill her straight away. The second option was better, even though illegal, so he is justified in acting in disregard for the law because by following the law it would have caused a greater harm.