[lbo-talk] Judgment error: [was:Dean: hang 'em high!

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  > As human beings -- including jurors, witnesses, judges, prosecutors,
>>  detectives, defense attorneys, expert witnesses, etc. -- cannot avoid
>>  making errors, even in a hypothetically perfect society, there can
>>  and will be miscarriages of justice, including cases of individuals
>>  who had been convicted of murder but who turn out to be innocent
>>  later.  Death penalties, once carried out, are irreversible, but
>>  other sentences -- including life imprisonment without parole -- can
>>  be ended or commuted to lesser sentences.  The abolition of death
>>  penalty may be thought of as an insurance policy -- you insure
>>  against the possibility of killing innocents by mistake, the
>>  inevitable cost of insurance being the necessity to deprive the truly
>>  guilty of the right to be responsible for their crimes and punished
>>  accordingly.
>>  --
>>  Yoshie
>
>So if I understand your argument correctly, we should abstain from 
>killing when the possibility of judgment error exist.  So how would 
>that work in a situation when the spouses have a euthanasia 
>agreement, and one of them cecomes incurably incapacitated.  What 
>should the other one do in such a situation?  There is a possibility 
>of error about the incapacitated person's condition (i.e. he or she 
>may recover), so your argument suggests that the other person should 
>not carry out the euthanasia agreement.  But that is not only a 
>serious breech of trust, but there is a possibility that the 
>incapacitaed person may syffer for a long period of time. 
>
>The possibility of error does not prevent us from doing other 
>irreversible things, if we proceed with reasonable caution.  In 
>fact, most things we do are irreversible.  I see no reason why death 
>penalty should be exempt from it.
>
>Wojtek

Euthanasia isn't a penalty for the euthanized -- it's a way of 
honoring the will of an individual who wishes not to be subjected to 
pain of injuries, illnesses, and/or futile treatments when death is 
imminent in any event.  When an individual writes a will or makes a 
contract with his or her spouse arranging for euthanasia in a country 
where it is legal, the individual in question assumes the risk of 
errors on the part of the spouse and medical doctors.  An innocent 
individual who is sentenced to death by miscarriage of justice cannot 
be said to have assumed the same risk as one who has made a 
contractual arrangement for euthanasia.  Why should anyone be 
mistakenly sentenced to death and punished for a crime of which he or 
she is not guilty, when the abolition of death penalty can insure 
against such a possibility?
-- 
Yoshie

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