I ain't no dark vader ^^

Too often 'being pragmatic' winds up being 'sacrificing rule utilitarianism in the name of act utilitarianism'. What does it matter in the grand scheme of things what happens to a single convict? Whether he serves 10 years or 20? Should that matter to us, someone we've never met, in circumstances unrelated to us? What matters is the rules that lead to that outcome, not the outcome itself. Because when those rules are applied to us, when the system relying on those rules gets more twisted and corrupted, it breaks for everyone. One innocent man being throw in prison for 30 years for a murder he didn't commit, or one truck driver being crucified by prosecutors to appease a mob, or one police officer being sent to prison for an honest mistake without any criminal intent or recklessness. Pile those up, one after another, and soon you've got a system that will set free hardened criminals because they've got the right politics or skin color or social class, and throw others in prison even when they're innocent because they're from the wrong group. And then everyone in the 'wrong' group ought to start worrying, as well as anyone in the 'right' groups with a conscience.

They cut this guys prison sentence in half because his murder was committed in support of a political cause that the prosecutors agree with. That sets the precedent, shows it can be done, opens the door.

that's all well and good, but ill be happy to tell you when i think we have a justice system that's swung too far on the pendulum. as it sits now it's still wildly too harsh on crimes and defendants. typifying cases dont change the fact that the system needs wild reform, and failed instances of reform like this dont change that paradigm.

Womp. oops

This post was edited by EndlessSky on Feb 11 2022 04:32pm

I'm more of a deontologist. Code of ethics and everything.

But that is clearly not the point of the criticism here. This is not a debate about how harsh or lenient the justice system should be, it is a debate about how dangerous a precedent it sets when political partisanship becomes a mitigating or aggravating factor in the criminal justice system. Last page, you said that you agree that it's fucked up to commute a sentence because the prosecutor agrees with the partisan motivation of the crime, but aren't bothered because you like the consequences in this particular case.

We don't even need to jump into deep philosophical debates about deontology vs ethics of responsibility like goom and skinned alluded to - your pragmatist argument doesn't even hold on its own because the faulty process is leading to not just one, but two outcomes here: a lighter and perhaps more adequate sentence for the defendant, and a normalization of partisan justice which would undermine justice itself. Even from a pragmatist standpoint, the faulty process in this case is so egregious and evidently dangerous that no welcome single-case consequence (lighter sentence for one single man) arising from this process can outweigh it.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 11 2022 07:04pm

10 = tapped your wife didn't mean to hurt your feelings, didn't call in to check if you were still at work

20 = tapped your wife didn't mean to hurt your feelings, didn't care if you were or not/or should have assumed you might come home early.

Guess lefties love using 7th grade logic in courts in hopes real world just going to forgive them instantly

This post was edited by addone on Feb 11 2022 07:22pm

Orwell wrote,
"As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil."

I think murder is generally accepted if your government tells you to do it, or you believe you that are defending yourself.

This post was edited by dannyscow2 on Feb 11 2022 07:43pm

context matters

That's true
You have any?