No. I actually agree that there’s an argument there. I didn’t see it until merely better pointed out. I’ve never claimed to be terribly smart. Thanks. (Pray don’t reveal to the blog police that a point changed my mind.)

I can think of two ways—I’m remebering the UK definition of a “life” sentence wrong (entirely possible), or the UK has some means of holding people in prison who have served out their sentence. If so, that’s a funny way to run a justice system.

(Germany does have such a means, called Sicherheitsbewährung, in which people who have served out their full sentences but are still deemed a threat to society remain imprisoned. It is a funny way to run a justice system. Though not necessarily funny ha-ha.)

Anyway, this is a hard problem that societies cannot get away from, and I think that reasonable people can disagree on what a just punishment is.

T. Williams may have become a different person in the later stages of his life. His four victims are still the same, denied their futures by his deliberate actions. Society has to wrestle with that truth as well.

(I’m simply an opponent of capital punishment as opposed to a subscriber to Chris’s arguments here): “defense” has at least two meanings in this context, surely? I’d “defend” Pinochet’s right to a fair trial and oppose capital punishment in his case, because I must; but you will not see any kind of impassioned or even feeble and bleating defence of him and his actions from me.

Doug
So another person’s life—in the case of T. McVeigh, another 168 persons’ lives, or in the case of that British doctor, something like 250 persons’ lives—is worth 15 years of their killers’ lives. That’s it. Nothing more.

Is this just?

Yes. Equality of persons before the law requires, IMO —perhaps paradoxically—that we do not weigh lives’ worth in that manner.

FYI Shipman (“that British doctor”) would almost certainly never have been released from gaol.

Perhaps. So what? Are you seriously suggesting that a one-year jail term is the appropriate sentence for the overwhelming majority of unpremeditated murders? If not, then what “actually happens a lot more often than you’d think”, in a system we all agree is highly imperfect, is completely irrelevant.

Hello, complete nonsequitur.

Gary, do you seriously need somebody here to explain to you the obvious connection between delayed punishments and the Pinochet case?

Whether pro- or anti-, it all depends on your definition of “just”. It makes sense, both from a pre-emptive and emotionally satisfactory perspective. Then again, from a pre-emptive perspective, killing anyone makes sense, while from an emotional perspective anything can be considered prudent.
Either motivation is to be considered a suspect cornerstone for carrying the weight of the abstract that is Justice. Justice requires knowledge of Truth (of every relevant fact), which is beyond our grasp even when we try our best to investigate the multi-dimensional and recursive maze that is Everything. We’re in slightly over our heads there, so to speak.

Instead, we make do with the ethical restrictions reality tends to put on our brave little shoulders. And so many live, and some die. From a communal perspective, it sorta works, at the cost of many individual tragedies.

In other words: Justice does not exist, no matter how or how hard we try to implement it. Our limitations beg for roadkill.

Hello, complete nonsequitur.

Your arguement is more that even if you thought it was right at one time, the passing of time would change this. I don’t think this effects the nature of my comments.

For the record, that was basically a slip of the brain/fingers, rather than a considered choice or words. Although it’s more or less the concept at the heart of the debate. But I actually meant to type “capital punishment,” as a point in fact.

Good point. If I have to wait 30 or 40 years for George W. Bush to be executed, it will be well worth the wait.
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By the way, I cannot wait for Chris and company’s impassioned defense of Pinochet.

How about it Chris?

Waiting this long is cruel, and by that I mean to everyone involved.
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After 25 years in an American prison, one is likely to be a different person all right—-a much WORSE person.

Um, no I didn’t indicate any such thing.

And as for the rest of your argument, I think a little reflection will tell you that knowledge now that X will be become inappropriate at some future time does not generally entail that X is inappropriate now. For example, my knowledge now that it will be inappropriate to offer my condolences to a bereaved person at some future time does not entail that it is inappropriate to offer them now.

I was suggesting that it was an illogical arguement on the following basis.

He indicated that there was a point in time (temporally close to the time of the act) when the death penalty was appropriate. Then he asserts that there is a later point in time when it is not appropriate. The reason stated for this is that the person is no longer the same person due to the time lag. However, based on this reasoning at any point in time following the act we know that there will be a future point in time when the death penalty will not be appropriate. Therefore, it is never appropriate.