Mental capacity should have absolutely no effect on the law's reaction beyond the likelihood that it has to a person recommitting a dangerous act. If the law is less strict on mentally disabled people, then it becomes a long-arm of personal vendettas -- it is basically saying, we don't hate this person as much because he didn't know what he was doing.
But the law should not consider hatred at all. It should only consider the safety of the people. Whether or not a person understood what they were doing is independent of how dangerous what they did was. Moreover, a person who does not understand what they did cannot be trusted to not do it again. Therefore, a person lacking the mental capacity to discriminate between what we as a society have considered "right" and "wrong" is one of the most dangerous individuals, and should be terminated.
If the intention is to not ever release the offender, then as I have already pointed out, the only reason not to terminate the offender is to torture them and take pleasure in their suffering by dragging out their miserable confined life as long as possible. The only humane thing to do with a person you don't intend to release is to kill them.
It has been said that to deprive a person of his death is as cruel as depriving him of his life. If that is so, this society is not so virtuous in its rejection of capital punishment. Both ways express a gross practice of vengeance.
stuh505 wrote:Mental capacity should have absolutely no effect on the law's reaction beyond the likelihood that it has to a person recommitting a dangerous act. If the law is less strict on mentally disabled people, then it becomes a long-arm of personal vendettas -- it is basically saying, we don't hate this person as much because he didn't know what he was doing.
Quote:Surely you can't be serious. Mental capacity goes to the question of whether the accused can be legally responsible for the crime. If we punish a person who is not responsible, then that is not only vengeance, it is mindless, unjustifiable vengeance.
1) Let us use the word "intent" instead of "responsibility" because that can be confused with a more basic "cause and effect" definition.
2) You say "legally responsible" as if current laws are relevant...yet we are talking in an abstract, philosophical viewpoint about what the ideal laws SHOULD be...so in this context, existing legal laws are not relevant.
3) If you take OmSigDavid's opinion that the law should be out for revenge, then yes it wouldn't make sense to take vengeance on someone who did not intent to cause harm from their actions. But let us be clear here: we are not talking about accidental actions. We are talking about intentional actions whose EFFECTS were unintentional, or beyond the predictive power of the perpetrator.
However, if you believe that the law's purpose should merely be the protect, then it is as I have said...the perpetrator's comprehension of what he is doing is COMPLETELY irrelevant. The fact that it is even a human being is not relevant. The only thing that matters from this perspective is the fact that there is "something" which is causing harm to the people. Whether this be an animate or inanimate object, aware of its actions or not, does not matter -- all that matters is that it is dangerous and should be stopped.
Quote:That is one of the most reprehensible things I've ever read on these fora.
That you should consider a me saying that the law should not be an avenue of hatred to be reprehensible certainly does not say much good for your character.
Quote:Who are you to make that decision? The fact that thousands of inmates on American death rows are desperately trying to avoid execution certainly belies the notion that imprisonment is more inhumane than death.
I never said I was an egomaniac, I merely stated an opinion. All people should have opinions and be unafraid to voice them. Obviously I am not the one to make that decision. I believe that the decision should not be made by any one person, but by the collective opinion of all informed elected people.
I have not seen the statistics on life-imprisoned inmates...so what you say may or may not be true. But if it is true, that still does not mean it is the best thing for them. People can make a decision out of fear that is not in their best interests. It may be more humane to end the life of someone against their will because they are afraid of death then keep them in a life of unhappy suffering.
However, this is really a secondary issue. There is a social contract that when you become a danger to society, you lose your rights as a member of society. Keeping someone locked up for life is a financial drain on society, so if the decision has been made that this person is so dangerous and unsocial that they cannot ever be released, I see no reason why the rest of society should be made to suffer by paying life support.
Chumly wrote:Chumly kicks ass!
(Now you know why I was happy to pose this question (which really interests me) but said I probably wouldn't be participating much in the debate. I just don't have it go through what you guys go through in the process of a good argument! Too stressful. But you obviously enjoy this! Why this is so is a complete & utter mystery to me, but carry on! :wink:)
1) Let us use the word "intent" instead of "responsibility" because that can be confused with a more basic "cause and effect" definition.
2) You say "legally responsible" as if current laws are relevant...yet we are talking in an abstract, philosophical viewpoint about what the ideal laws SHOULD be...so in this context, existing legal laws are not relevant.
3) If you take OmSigDavid's opinion that the law should be out for revenge, then yes it wouldn't make sense to take vengeance on someone who did not intent to cause harm from their actions. But let us be clear here: we are not talking about accidental actions. We are talking about intentional actions whose EFFECTS were unintentional, or beyond the predictive power of the perpetrator.
However, if you believe that the law's purpose should merely be the protect, then it is as I have said...the perpetrator's comprehension of what he is doing is COMPLETELY irrelevant. The fact that it is even a human being is not relevant. The only thing that matters from this perspective is the fact that there is "something" which is causing harm to the people. Whether this be an animate or inanimate object, aware of its actions or not, does not matter -- all that matters is that it is dangerous and should be stopped.
That you should consider a me saying that the law should not be an avenue of hatred to be reprehensible certainly does not say much good for your character.
I never said I was an egomaniac, I merely stated an opinion.
All people should have opinions and be unafraid to voice them. Obviously I am not the one to make that decision. I believe that the decision should not be made by any one person, but by the collective opinion of all informed elected people.
I have not seen the statistics on life-imprisoned inmates...so what you say may or may not be true. But if it is true, that still does not mean it is the best thing for them. People can make a decision out of fear that is not in their best interests. It may be more humane to end the life of someone against their will because they are afraid of death then keep them in a life of unhappy suffering.
However, this is really a secondary issue. There is a social contract that when you become a danger to society, you lose your rights as a member of society. Keeping someone locked up for life is a financial drain on society, so if the decision has been made that this person is so dangerous and unsocial that they cannot ever be released, I see no reason why the rest of society should be made to suffer by paying life support.
"Intent" and "responsibility" are two different things.
If you advocate a change in the existing legal structure so that responsibility is no longer tied to punishment, then you should make that clear.
We are [we are not talking about accidental actions. We are talking about intentional actions whose EFFECTS were unintentional, or beyond the predictive power of the perpetrator.]? Since when?
Of course, I don't agree that the law's purpose is merely to protect.
You advocated a policy which, if carried through to its logical conclusion, would lead to the execution of all mentally handicapped or impaired individuals who were unable to distinguish between right and wrong. I can't understand how you missed that.
Why leave the decision to them? If a prisoner wants to commit suicide, shouldn't that decision be left to him?
And your decisions about keeping yourself alive might be equally flawed, but I doubt that you'd want to cede your responsibility for making those decisions to the state.
Society doesn't suffer at all because society doesn't pay anything. The taxpayers might pay a small pittance to support prisoners with life sentences, but the suffering of any single taxpayer is miniscule in comparison to the suffering of a prisoner being put to death by the state.
Quote:"Intent" and "responsibility" are two different things.
Indeed they are. If they were identical I would not have written a paragraph explaining why you should have said "intent" instead of "responsibility."
We are since you brought up the issue of retarded people who commit murders.
If the murder was accidental and admissible then they wouldn't have been sentenced to life imprisonment or execution so I assumed the question only applied to retarded people who are also murderers.
Well, I'm glad that the source of disagreement here has been identified. Obviously the first step in deciding what a law should be is deciding what purpose it should serve. So what purpose(s) do you think the law should have?
No, it wouldn't. It would result in the execution of mentally handicapped people who had intentionally committed murders in the past and who were handicapped to the degree that they could not understand that what they had done was wrong. This excludes probably 99.999% of all mentally handicapped people.
That depends on the purpose of the law. If the purpose of the law is as I suggested, merely to protect, then absolutely -- if the prisoners want to off themselves, then this only simplifies things. If, however, you believe that the purpose of the law should be to torture people and exact revenge, then it would not make sense to allow murderers to escape via death.
Absolutely, but that is my benefit as a person who still has rights. A person who has been sentenced to life imprisonment or death row has ceded all their rights (including the choice of whether or not they should live or die) by violating our social contract.
"The cost of life imprisonment is high. Maximum security beds cost taxpayers $68,156 a year per inmate (Correctional Service of Canada, 1997, p. 12)"
It doesn't matter how you distribute that among the population. That's more money than most individual people make.
And even if it was just a small amount, it's the principle that counts. A prisoner should be paid for first by selling off his previous personal property.
Joe - excuse me but I have trouble following your legal reasoning: in the US we force mentally disturbed or retarded prisoners to take medications until they're deemed sufficiently "sane" to be executed, right? In fact it's my recollection that until recently we used to execute the retarded without regard to their mental incapacity - precisely Stuh's argument as I understood it.
At the very least they should be allowed to commit suicide undisturbed - at least in countries without the death penalty.
No, actually you didn't explain that at all. You merely said that we should use the word "intent" rather than "responsibility." That's not an explanation.
Laws must embody and reflect the values and morality of society. That is their sole purpose.
Nowhere did you say that you confined your policy of "termination" to "mentally handicapped people who had intentionally committed murders" and "who could not understand that whey they had done was wrong." If you're saying that now, then you've changed your position from monstrously reprehensible to only moderately reprehensible.
That's a bootstrapping argument. You assume that prisoners have forfeited their right to decide whether to live or die, when that is, in fact, the point that is being debated.
stuh505 wrote:And even if it was just a small amount, it's the principle that counts. A prisoner should be paid for first by selling off his previous personal property.
So rich murderers get life imprisonment as long as their funds hold out while poor murderers get "terminated," right? Your views really are reprehensible.
To give an example: Shooter kills Victim because he believes that god instructed him (through the voices in his head) to shoot Victim because Victim is possessed by demons. Did Shooter intend to kill Victim? Yes, of course he did. Is he legally responsible for murder? Probably not.
Under our laws as they now stand, Shooter would be given medical and psychological treatment. According to stuh, however, we should "terminate" him because he killed someone and he can't tell the difference between right and wrong. I find that position morally repugnant.
Quote:Mental capacity goes to the question of whether the accused can be legally responsible for the crime.
If we punish a person who is not responsible, then that is not only vengeance, it is mindless, unjustifiable vengeance.
I believe that the point here is that the M'Naughten rule
was decided in error, and that its philosophy shud be repudiated,
such that all criminal defendants will be judged by their objective conduct,
rather than what thay are thinking about.
stuh505 wrote:But the law should not consider hatred at all.
It should only consider the safety of the people.
Whether or not a person understood what they were doing
is independent of how dangerous what they did was.
Moreover, a person who does not understand what they did cannot be
trusted to not do it again. Therefore, a person lacking the mental capacity
to discriminate between what we as a society have considered "right"
and "wrong" is one of the most dangerous individuals, and should be terminated.
Quote:That is one of the most reprehensible things I've ever read on these fora.
I join with 505 in this point of vu. .
Government was created for purposes of defense and vengeance.
Those purposes are well served by getting rid of singularly dangerous threats,
e.g., predators who don 't know better than to attack the decent people.
Banishment is among the options for this riddance.
Quote:Stuh argues that the focus should be on intent rather than responsibility.
That is far different from the current state of the law.
Yes; hence the need to repudiate the M'Naughten rule.
Quote:To give an example: Shooter kills Victim because he believes that god
instructed him (through the voices in his head) to shoot Victim because
Victim is possessed by demons. Did Shooter intend to kill Victim?
Yes, of course he did. Is he legally responsible for murder?
Probably not.
Under our laws as they now stand,
Shooter would be given medical and psychological treatment.
True.
This is the result of arbitrary and capricious judicial reasoning,
that the decent people of America need, for their safety,
to be corrected, such that dangerous predators will be judged
by their conduct and not by what thay were thinking.
Quote:According to stuh, however, we should "terminate" him because he killed someone
and he can't tell the difference between right and wrong.
Sounds good; an eye for any eye.
I 'll take it further:
even if the victim of a violent lunatic
is fortunate enuf to recover from his or her wounds,
becaue said lunatic did not finish the job,
that lunatic is INTOLERABLY dangerous.
Quote:
I find that position morally repugnant.
It seems to me that your position
is less moral than that of 505,
Joe, in that it exposes the decent population
to unnecessary risk, for the benefit of violent predators.
If your point of vu were offered to the electorate
in a referendum, being opposed by that of 505,
who 'd u expect to win ?
David
Yes I did...to repeat: you brought up the subject of retards and said that since they were not legally responsible, they shouldn't be executed.
In order to reply to you I would have to use the word "responsible". However, I did not want to use that word because "responsible" because it could be interpreted to mean "caused by", and in that sense one could say that a retarded IS responsible for their actions.
A less ambiguous word for what you meant is therefore "intent" because the assumption is that the retard did not intend for his actions to cause pain and suffering, even though he is physically responsible for those actions.
The sentence you quoted was a summary sentence repeating/rephrasing the points I had made previously...so in the rewording some of the presumptions were not explicitly re-stated...but they WERE stated.
You mean to say "circular logic" not "bootstrapping" which is different.
Circular logic would be assuming the conclusion in the premise. It's not circular logic because the conclusion was "I would not want to cede my right to live" and the premise was "prisoners on life sentence have lost the right to choose whether they live or die", which was the conclusion that I previously came to about my opinion on the thread subject. So...this is 2 different conclusions chained together, not 1 circular conclusion.
You argued that the cost of imprisonment was insignificant. I provided evidence showing that it was more expensive than the average income of a person. You replied with "so what?" I don't think it makes sense to have society give more money to criminals than to law abiding citizens...and it's clearly not insignificant.
joefromchicago wrote:stuh505 wrote:And even if it was just a small amount, it's the principle that counts. A prisoner should be paid for first by selling off his previous personal property.
So rich murderers get life imprisonment as long as their funds hold out while poor murderers get "terminated," right? Your views really are reprehensible.
What part of the word "first" do you not understand?
The shooter in this case is obviously beyond any type of rehabilitation and is a serious threat to other peoples' lives. It would be completely idiotic to waste money in an attempt trying to rehabilitate such as lost cause, and insane to release him back into the public.
