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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30340 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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You are conflating criminal liability with criminal punishment. No one is saying that retribution is not one function of punishment. See Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 US 346 [describing "the two primary objectives of criminal punishment: retribution or deterrence."].

Perhaps retributive justice has fallen out of fashion in your circles.

As I have pointed out, it has never been "in fashion" to consider the moral worth of the victim when determining the criminal liability of the perpetrator of a crime, so this is a complete non sequitur.

You never heard the 'he deserved it' defense from a wife who killed her husband?

Not in the real world, rather than on TV. Such evidence is relevant only to show that the wife actually and reasonably feared for her life, or felt that she could not escape. It is 100% NOT admissible to show that the husband deserved it.

In theory.

In reality, if you were her lawyer, you would absolutely try to give that impression.

'He started it' and 'he deserved it' will always carry moral weight, letter of the law notwithstanding. Justice is about assigning blame, and so the victim, in my view, is also on trial.

But we are not talking about what a lawyer can get away with. We are talking about the underlying premises of the criminal justice system, to which the moral status of the victim is irrelevant.

Yes that's what the law says... so back to the question, why?

We’re not making much progress here. To conclude this discussion, it’s been alright, but it remains a mystery to me why you (forget the law) think the moral status of the victim should be irrelevant, when it clearly matters to an ordinary jury and to me, and I have given a few rationales for that instinct.

Because I, like the law, think that it is only the defendant's moral culpability that matters, and hence a defendant should not get a pass because he is lucky enough to kill a bad guy. It is a very standard approach to moral judgment. See here

Ah, interesting, and a valid answer. In that case, I resent the deontologist tyranny.

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