Wisdom isn’t easy to come by. If it were, we would all be King Solomon. It isn’t; we aren’t.
Why should I bring this up? At a lunch, someone asked whether I would set free a murderer who had served 35 years of a life sentence for two deaths, but who had become during those decades a “different person,” a reformed person, even a remorseful person. I could ask you the same question. In fact, here it is: What, dear reader, would you in your wisdom do with someone who had changed in behavior and character but who still had to serve in prison whatever years he had left? Would you offer parole?
I suppose perspective tinges response. What would I think if I were someone who loved those who were murdered? My argument would probably be based on those deaths and my loss. The dead won’t return. Isn’t life in prison still life? The murderer continues to live. From the perspective of the “victim,” the punishment doesn’t really equal the crime.
Of course, there are those who are full of mercy and forgiveness, even though they might be victims. From such a perspective, the punishment might be an objective form of justice. Anything short of the death sentence would demonstrate mercy. The punishment doesn’t have to equal the crime because the death of one won’t equal the death of two. Death sentences still don’t return the dead victims to the realm of the living.
Then there’s the perspective of the courts; the “blind” justice system metes out what the law requires, though a judge can push the punishment to the allowable limits. The same justice system locks in an initial sentence that lacks a provision for parole. The justice system has its hands tied in the matter. The sentence once set, remains set and does so in the absence of any emotion.
What, however, if culture changes? And what happens when a culture moves from an absolute to a situational ethics, from, for example, an eighteenth-century Calvinist rigidity to a Hobbesian relativism? What if that which once seemed unforgiveable becomes slightly forgivable—especially when no one from the original victims’ families, neighbors, or otherwise personally concerned individual remains alive? Thirty-five years impose forgetfulness, if not of intellect at least of emotion, on everyone except survivors.
Hmmn. Thinking…
Sill thinking…
Are you weighing your Hobbesian and Calvinist tendencies to resolve your dilemma about releasing a reformed murderer who hasn’t served his complete sentence? If you were in seventeenth-century Edinburgh, Scotland, there would hardly be a question. Keep the guy in prison and tell him he’s lucky to be alive. If you were in eighteenth-century Scotland, well, there might be some doubt, especially if you were falling under the influences that led to literary Romanticism and humanism. Why Scotland?
In How the Scots Invented the Modern World, Arthur Herman discusses how the natural philosophy of Samuel von Pufendorf influenced the thinking of Scotsman, clergyman, and author Francis Hutcheson. Not long after the Salem witch hunt, Hutcheson, having been influenced by Pufendorf’s thinking, argued against the persecution of witches, a process that also occurred in Great Britain—as it occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa today. Now, I’m not saying that our murderer is a witch, but rather that many people today might apply principles of natural philosophy that have streamed to us from Hobbes through Pufendorf through people like Hutcheson. Anyway, here’s how Herman explains the matter germane to our murderer:
"Man in nature carries with him the spark of divine reason, Pufendorf argued, allowing him to grasp nature’s governing laws. This includes the moral laws. As human beings living in society, we have certain rights that we bring to the table with us from our natural state, such as the right to our own life and our property. But there are also certain obligations we have to observe. One of the most obvious of these is obeying the laws established through common consent. But the other is the moral law governing our private conduct toward others. Without a moral law, no community is possible."*
In his book against persecuting witches, Hutcheson makes an argument that we might extrapolate to today and interpret as a plea for mercy for our long-imprisoned murderer:
"Virtuous persons, that judge of others by themselves, can never imagine, what Wicked Wretches, or Humoursome People, or those that are secretly encouraged or managed by others, will do."**
You’re thinking, “Yes, without my being directly involved in lives of the murder victims, I “feel mercy” these 35 years later for the imprisoned murderer. Who knows what motivated him at the time? Maybe it was a stupid gut reaction driven by some temporary physical or psychological influence. I can’t relive the tragedy. I really can’t ‘feel’ for the victims, but I can feel for the reformed murderer before me. If the murderer was in his twenties, he’s spent his adult life behind bars for an act that took, at best, less than a minute.”
But what about Pufendorf’s argument that society is held together by “laws established through common consent”? Aren’t jail terms legally defined? To answer your unspoken question: Yes, there are laws enacted without majority consent.***
At the time of the murders, laws governing the punishment and sentencing were in place for all of society. Regardless of the feelings associated with the crime, the common consent had been codified. So, if you “feel” the murderer has served enough time, do you also “feel” that the laws governing the murderer’s punishment were closer to the witchhunt mentality of the seventeenth century than to Hutcheson’s more psychological outlook in the eighteenth? If you’re for mercy, then you belong to the Hutcheson school of thought, and you believe there’s an innate goodness in humans worth salvaging. Reform. Release. Rejoin.
Both Hobbes and John Knox believed in an underlying depravity that had to be reined in, the former through the state and the later through religion. As Herman points out in his book, there’s an irony that both the relativist and the absolutist came to the same conclusion. Hutcheson believed that there was some middle position. That middle position has led us to our modern “psychologizing.” We believe we see the gray where Hobbes and Knox saw only the black or white. And, in that, we have come a long way from absolutism undisguised or absolutism disguised as relativism.
I still come back to that common consent, however. If we keep changing it—and we do that regularly—we end up with a dissolution of that which binds us. Now, maybe you prefer to have no societal binding—facing the reality that all such bindings are loose, at best. But in the short term, in the span of a generation or two, untied bindings make any justice system unjust.
As much as I “feel” for the murderer (I assume that only the most hardened among us would have no “feelings” for the incarcerated), I would keep him in jail, possibly with an ameliorating adjustment of his conditions within the prison system. Now, what do you think?
*Herman, Arthur. New York, MJF Books, 2001, p. 72.
**Hutcheson, Francis. “A Dialogue betwixt a ClergyMan, a Scotch Advocate, and an English Jury-Man,” in An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft, etc. London, 1718, p. 7.
***Apparently, California’s “sanctuary state” law isn’t backed by the majority of Californians, and some state laws legalizing pot also lack majority support. But all laws are subject to re-examination and modification in democratic societies (an indication democracies don’t have an unshakeable John Knox Calvinist foundation).
Why should I bring this up? At a lunch, someone asked whether I would set free a murderer who had served 35 years of a life sentence for two deaths, but who had become during those decades a “different person,” a reformed person, even a remorseful person. I could ask you the same question. In fact, here it is: What, dear reader, would you in your wisdom do with someone who had changed in behavior and character but who still had to serve in prison whatever years he had left? Would you offer parole?
I suppose perspective tinges response. What would I think if I were someone who loved those who were murdered? My argument would probably be based on those deaths and my loss. The dead won’t return. Isn’t life in prison still life? The murderer continues to live. From the perspective of the “victim,” the punishment doesn’t really equal the crime.
Of course, there are those who are full of mercy and forgiveness, even though they might be victims. From such a perspective, the punishment might be an objective form of justice. Anything short of the death sentence would demonstrate mercy. The punishment doesn’t have to equal the crime because the death of one won’t equal the death of two. Death sentences still don’t return the dead victims to the realm of the living.
Then there’s the perspective of the courts; the “blind” justice system metes out what the law requires, though a judge can push the punishment to the allowable limits. The same justice system locks in an initial sentence that lacks a provision for parole. The justice system has its hands tied in the matter. The sentence once set, remains set and does so in the absence of any emotion.
What, however, if culture changes? And what happens when a culture moves from an absolute to a situational ethics, from, for example, an eighteenth-century Calvinist rigidity to a Hobbesian relativism? What if that which once seemed unforgiveable becomes slightly forgivable—especially when no one from the original victims’ families, neighbors, or otherwise personally concerned individual remains alive? Thirty-five years impose forgetfulness, if not of intellect at least of emotion, on everyone except survivors.
Hmmn. Thinking…
Sill thinking…
Are you weighing your Hobbesian and Calvinist tendencies to resolve your dilemma about releasing a reformed murderer who hasn’t served his complete sentence? If you were in seventeenth-century Edinburgh, Scotland, there would hardly be a question. Keep the guy in prison and tell him he’s lucky to be alive. If you were in eighteenth-century Scotland, well, there might be some doubt, especially if you were falling under the influences that led to literary Romanticism and humanism. Why Scotland?
In How the Scots Invented the Modern World, Arthur Herman discusses how the natural philosophy of Samuel von Pufendorf influenced the thinking of Scotsman, clergyman, and author Francis Hutcheson. Not long after the Salem witch hunt, Hutcheson, having been influenced by Pufendorf’s thinking, argued against the persecution of witches, a process that also occurred in Great Britain—as it occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa today. Now, I’m not saying that our murderer is a witch, but rather that many people today might apply principles of natural philosophy that have streamed to us from Hobbes through Pufendorf through people like Hutcheson. Anyway, here’s how Herman explains the matter germane to our murderer:
"Man in nature carries with him the spark of divine reason, Pufendorf argued, allowing him to grasp nature’s governing laws. This includes the moral laws. As human beings living in society, we have certain rights that we bring to the table with us from our natural state, such as the right to our own life and our property. But there are also certain obligations we have to observe. One of the most obvious of these is obeying the laws established through common consent. But the other is the moral law governing our private conduct toward others. Without a moral law, no community is possible."*
In his book against persecuting witches, Hutcheson makes an argument that we might extrapolate to today and interpret as a plea for mercy for our long-imprisoned murderer:
"Virtuous persons, that judge of others by themselves, can never imagine, what Wicked Wretches, or Humoursome People, or those that are secretly encouraged or managed by others, will do."**
You’re thinking, “Yes, without my being directly involved in lives of the murder victims, I “feel mercy” these 35 years later for the imprisoned murderer. Who knows what motivated him at the time? Maybe it was a stupid gut reaction driven by some temporary physical or psychological influence. I can’t relive the tragedy. I really can’t ‘feel’ for the victims, but I can feel for the reformed murderer before me. If the murderer was in his twenties, he’s spent his adult life behind bars for an act that took, at best, less than a minute.”
But what about Pufendorf’s argument that society is held together by “laws established through common consent”? Aren’t jail terms legally defined? To answer your unspoken question: Yes, there are laws enacted without majority consent.***
At the time of the murders, laws governing the punishment and sentencing were in place for all of society. Regardless of the feelings associated with the crime, the common consent had been codified. So, if you “feel” the murderer has served enough time, do you also “feel” that the laws governing the murderer’s punishment were closer to the witchhunt mentality of the seventeenth century than to Hutcheson’s more psychological outlook in the eighteenth? If you’re for mercy, then you belong to the Hutcheson school of thought, and you believe there’s an innate goodness in humans worth salvaging. Reform. Release. Rejoin.
Both Hobbes and John Knox believed in an underlying depravity that had to be reined in, the former through the state and the later through religion. As Herman points out in his book, there’s an irony that both the relativist and the absolutist came to the same conclusion. Hutcheson believed that there was some middle position. That middle position has led us to our modern “psychologizing.” We believe we see the gray where Hobbes and Knox saw only the black or white. And, in that, we have come a long way from absolutism undisguised or absolutism disguised as relativism.
I still come back to that common consent, however. If we keep changing it—and we do that regularly—we end up with a dissolution of that which binds us. Now, maybe you prefer to have no societal binding—facing the reality that all such bindings are loose, at best. But in the short term, in the span of a generation or two, untied bindings make any justice system unjust.
As much as I “feel” for the murderer (I assume that only the most hardened among us would have no “feelings” for the incarcerated), I would keep him in jail, possibly with an ameliorating adjustment of his conditions within the prison system. Now, what do you think?
*Herman, Arthur. New York, MJF Books, 2001, p. 72.
**Hutcheson, Francis. “A Dialogue betwixt a ClergyMan, a Scotch Advocate, and an English Jury-Man,” in An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft, etc. London, 1718, p. 7.
***Apparently, California’s “sanctuary state” law isn’t backed by the majority of Californians, and some state laws legalizing pot also lack majority support. But all laws are subject to re-examination and modification in democratic societies (an indication democracies don’t have an unshakeable John Knox Calvinist foundation).
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