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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31395 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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To be clear on the arguments for clemency, it seems to be almost entirely based on uncertainty about which man pulled the trigger. This sort of hairsplitting, about who pulled the trigger is the kind of thing that I was referring to in the previous discussion as being about as close to just plain evil as any relatively normal, common policy position could be.

To interrogate this a little: do you think that attempted murder should have the same punishment as accomplished murder?

Historically attempted murder has often drawn a lower penalty than completed murder, with there being an underlying assumption that failure to complete the act indicates some lack of mens rea to do so, or that cosmically it is wrong to execute a man without another body on the other side of the scale. After all, for Hammurabi "An eye for an eye" represented a gentler moderation rather than a harsher extreme, by that logic one cannot execute one's enemies unless they have taken a life.

One can, of course, focus on the mens rea and say that it's the evil intent that is most important.

I'm just curious where you come down on that argument.

Historically attempted murder has often drawn a lower penalty than completed murder, with there being an underlying assumption that failure to complete the act indicates some lack of mens rea to do so, or that cosmically it is wrong to execute a man without another body on the other side of the scale.

Historically both attempted murder and murder were punished by hanging. More recently as criminal justice evolved into a more formalized system attempt murder was considered less serious by, usually, 1 tick. So murder would be a class 1 (or A or whatever based on the state) then attempt murder was class 2, which realistically meant 30 years instead of 40 or something along those lines.

To interrogate this a little: do you think that attempted murder should have the same punishment as accomplished murder?

It's a difficult question, but there is a compelling (to me) consequentialist argument as to why it should not have the same punishment. It's a variation on the Dazexiang Uprising issue; if the consequences are the same, the moral event horizon of having "nothing left to lose" is crossed earlier, which could harden the resolve of would-be murderers in cases where they might have otherwise hesitated. It might also encourage them to take more extreme, deadlier methods because the risk of their victim surviving and becoming a witness becomes too great. One might chose to go with shooting or stabbing when they would have gone with a less effective "softer" poisoning because the downside of failure has increased dramatically.

*EDIT: Context for those unfamiliar with the Dazexiang Uprising story; two Qin dynasty officers who were going to be late taking their men to defend a village figured that since the penalty for lateness (no matter the reason) was death, they might as well take their chances in an uprising since the penalty for that was the same.

My take on it is that punishment should more be based on what is best for the rest of us. Do we want to live next to this person? Is this person a massive risk for the rest of us and a drag on society? My main argument for the death penalty is that we are far better off without these people. They high risk.

To commit such extreme crimes they most likely have an outlier awful personality with high levels of psychopathy, poor impulse control and low IQ. They are pretty much the extreme left tail of the bell curve. We are simply better off without them. Also getting rid of these people is a eugenic measure that is highly effective as we would be removing the people with the worst possible traits.

Yes, but not unlike the problem of schools (nobody cared when dumb kids were dumb when everyone was white, but thanks to Multiculturalism if too many dumb kids are non-white you need to stop teaching algebra or calculus to anyone, and abolish standardized testing, and remove all discipline) we now have a problem with the death penalty, or even imprisoning anyone. When the country was majority white, I'm not sure anyone really cared if people who obviously murdered someone were put to death. I'm not sure anyone cared if a bunch of poor whites from the same zipcode were always getting thrown in jail. Add a dash of Multiculturalism however, and suddenly we aren't allowed to have a functional civilization anymore. To many non-whites end up in jail or get the death penalty? Time to start depolicing and just letting people go. Sure they might murder someone you love a week later, but at least we won't be racist.

What are you talking about?

Multicultural America is the only majority white country left that has the death penalty.

When England permanently put a moratorium on executions, it was 90% white British.

The US movement to abolish the death penalty goes back to the 18th century, when multicultural considerations weren't a thing. I will leave this link to Perplexity's quick summary that has further links.

You are correct that currently people are concerned with the death penalty in part because it affects black men more than white men. (And that nobody cares that it affects white men more then Asian men or black women, etc.)

Uh, do you understand the history of the death penalty in the USA? Until the very late 20th century, the death penalty was quite strongly associated with, and mostly used on, large black populations.

That’s not an argument against, but the death penalty being in heavy use against blacks has been going on for a long time, and recent shifts in demographic composition are not the reason many opponents tie it to civil rights.

When the country was majority white, I'm not sure anyone really cared if people who obviously murdered someone were put to death.

The SCOTUS-ordered moratorium on the death penalty was in place 1972-1976, at which time the US was still roughly 80% non-Hispanic white. European countries mostly abolished the death penalty back when they were still monoethnic. The other only other unquestionably first-world country to execute people on a regular basis is Singapore, which is rather notoriously not monoethnic.

So if anything, the empirical evidence points towards monoethnic countries being more abolitionist, not less.

Does China count as a first world country?

No. They are somewhere between Mexico and Thailand in GDP per capita, whether you use nominal or PPP.

They don't use it often, but Japan still has the death penalty, has executed 98 people in the last 25 years, and has done as recent as 2022. Taiwan restored the death penalty in 2010 and it enjoys substantial polling popularity.

The other only other unquestionably first-world country to execute people on a regular basis is Singapore, which is rather notoriously not monoethnic.

Japan and Taiwan both execute people often enough to qualify, no?

It's arguable. Taiwan has been executing slightly less than one person a year lately. Japan averages about three a year if you don't count the Aum Shinriyko sarin plotters - although they appear to be passing more death sentences than that given that Wikipedia says they have a backlog built up of 107 inmates on death row.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/states-landing

Looking through states that everyone agrees maintain the death penalty, there's lots of low-single digit numbers of annual executions and lots of 'carry out one execution every other year' type states. Like yes, they're much smaller than Taiwan or especially Japan, but Taiwan and Japan have much lower murder rates- and Japan in practice seems to use the death penalty for much the same things as retentionist US states. When you take that into account, a multiple murderer is possibly more likely to get the death penalty in Japan than in the US south.

Complete aside, but I've always been curious about the word "interrogate" when used in this way. It's such an aggressive and presumptuous substitute for "investigate" that until more recently was most associated with criminal interrogation--an inherently manipulative, unfair, and coercive type of investigation. I can't say these connotations are inappropriate given the people who tend to use the term "interrogate" in this context, but usually they're better at picking their euphamisms to sound nice and cuddly.

It’s a relatively standard word in the contemporary philosophical literature and it doesn’t have any aggressive connotations (you can “interrogate” a position you’re friendly to as well).

I associate it with post-2000s prolifieration of predominantly lefty critical theory type work, though it has clearly been adopted more broadly. I don't think it carries the aggressive connotations in those intellectual communities today, but I suspect outsiders would still make those associations. I also see it frequently used in a struggle-session way.

To me the use of the term indicates to be that Walter and I are playing Socratics, where you offer an answer to one question and then your interlocutor asks additional questions meant to pull out more information about your original position. By contrasting the answers to similarly situated cases we produce more nuanced rules or better understandings of underlying logic.

In my mind it's the opposite of manipulation, I'm inviting Walt to play the game with me. He can choose not to.

I'm fine with biting the moral luck bullet. Drunk driving is the clearest example of this for me, where there is obviously no literal intent to kill anyone, but we punish those who do kill someone much more harshly than those that are merely negligent. I have no intuitive reaction to how attempted murder should be punished, but it seems basically fine to me to not escalate punishment to execution without a successful murder.

So why does that not extend to the accomplice, rather than the triggerman, in a felony murder case? What if witnesses testify that the triggerman was at the counter alone while his accomplice was in another room, but cannot identify which was which? It seems odd to say, well we wouldn't kill both of them if we knew which one was which, but since we don't know which one was which we'll kill them both.

Though I'll note that capital Felony Murder seems like a fine rule to me in that a felony is a sufficient predicate for an execution, but we can draw ever more outre cases. How many Jan-6th type "felony trespassers" can you charge with the murder of Ashli Babbitt? Felony murder has been used to charge felons for the deaths of their accomplices, on the theory that violence was a predictable result of their felonies on the day, and so the deaths of their accomplices were a predictable result of the violence they invited. We're only looking for a sufficiently tyrannical prosecutor.

Drunk driving is the clearest example of this for me, where there is obviously no literal intent to kill anyone, but we punish those who do kill someone much more harshly than those that are merely negligent.

Let's set up a hypothetical: five guys are at a party, all drinking, assume the same amount and tolerance for the sake of the hypo, all clearly plan to drive home. Four of them are caught at a highway checkpoint and arrested, the last is not so "lucky" he took backroads and crashed into oncoming traffic and killed another driver. Should the four men who did not kill anyone be charged just as harshly?

So why does that not extend to the accomplice, rather than the triggerman, in a felony murder case? What if witnesses testify that the triggerman was at the counter alone while his accomplice was in another room, but cannot identify which was which? It seems odd to say, well we wouldn't kill both of them if we knew which one was which, but since we don't know which one was which we'll kill them both.

See this post for some elaboration. In the Littlejohn case, I don't think it's obligatory that he be executed, just that there is no miscarriage of justice in doing so. Had the jury gone the other way, I wouldn't have follow-up questions for them, it's fine.

Though I'll note that capital Felony Murder seems like a fine rule to me in that a felony is a sufficient predicate for an execution, but we can draw ever more outre cases. How many Jan-6th type "felony trespassers" can you charge with the murder of Ashli Babbitt? Felony murder has been used to charge felons for the deaths of their accomplices, on the theory that violence was a predictable result of their felonies on the day, and so the deaths of their accomplices were a predictable result of the violence they invited. We're only looking for a sufficiently tyrannical prosecutor.

Well, yeah, this is where a jury of your peers comes in, plus a little help from a judge in sentencing. I don't think planning on armed robbery where things going as planned results in someone getting a gun pointed at their face is all that similar to the guys that walked into the capital and were technically trespassing. Many lacked proximity to violence that would look like any sort of meaningful moral culpability. Further, Babbitt died because she charged a semi-fortified position with an armed officer there - her own death could easily be avoided with her own decisions. I get your point, but ultimately, it's hard to say much other than that this is exactly why judgment is relevant. There is no scalable, generalizable principle that would lead me to treat literally all plausible felony murder cases the same; two thugs deciding to knock over a convenient store and one of them shooting the owner in the face is pretty much a canonical example of what felony murder cases should be about though.

If the concern is really just that felony murder is too flexible a charge, I may well agree, but this isn't the case where that seems relevant to me.

Let's set up a hypothetical: five guys are at a party, all drinking, assume the same amount and tolerance for the sake of the hypo, all clearly plan to drive home. Four of them are caught at a highway checkpoint and arrested, the last is not so "lucky" he took backroads and crashed into oncoming traffic and killed another driver. Should the four men who did not kill anyone be charged just as harshly?

Nope. Like I said, I'm just willing to bite the bullet on the moral luck there. I can come up with reasons why I'm willing to do so, but I kind of suspect that they're all just post facto, formulated to serve the intuition rather than the other way around. On the flip side, if there was a clearly articulated law that DUI is always punished equally harshly, based on the known facts about the level of inebriation rather than the outcome of the driving, I wouldn't feel a great deal of sympathy for the guys at the checkpoint that got "unfairly" punished. Some behaviors are beyond the pale - whether drunk driving is one or not seems less obvious to me than whether armed robbery is. In either case, my intuition is that your punishment should coincide with the actual outcomes rather than a probabilistic model of outcomes, but I don't think I can muster a great defense of that position at the moment.

In the Littlejohn case, I don't think it's obligatory that he be executed, just that there is no miscarriage of justice in doing so. Had the jury gone the other way, I wouldn't have follow-up questions for them, it's fine.

This aligns with my basic intuition, I'd agree that the jury verdict should absolutely be respected absent a near certainty of error.

This, though, strikes me as a little shakier:

I don't think planning on armed robbery where things going as planned results in someone getting a gun pointed at their face is all that similar to the guys that walked into the capital and were technically trespassing.

The armed robbers planned for a gun to be pointed at someone's face. The crowd charging at armed police officers intended for someone to confront the armed police, that it wasn't them personally who ran into that police officer is moral luck.

Though your point about Juries is well taken.

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