when is there a right to kill?

[jesse]

who and when do people have the right to take another's life? Is there such thing as a partial or justified reason to murder?

If no, does that apply to capital punishment?

[Azerate218]

Dear Azerate218,

Does that mean if I cut you up in traffic you can murder me??

Signed, 'Worried of Merseyside'.

I personally wouldn't do it (as I don't want legal consequences), but if someone else got cut off and wanted to muder the person, then they should go ahead. Who am I to judge?

[seyorni]

OK, some thoughts... (I reserve the right to modify).

1. Self defense, when it's a question of you or him, and less than lethal force is not an option.
I'm unsure of this one, but realize a good case can be made for it.

2. Defense of other(s) lives, when less than lethal force is not an option and death/grave injury of the other is sure.
This is a generalization only. There are situations where it would not apply.

3. Euthanasia, when quality-of-life has moved into the negative zone and there is no reasonable prospect of improvement.

[cnorman18]

OK, some thoughts... (I reserve the right to modify).

1. Self defense, when it's a question of you or him, and less than lethal force is not an option.
I'm unsure of this one, but realize a good case can be made for it.

2. Defense of other(s) lives, when less than lethal force is not an option and death/grave injury of the other is sure.
This is a generalization only. There are situations where it would not apply.

3. Euthanasia, when quality-of-life has moved into the negative zone and there is no reasonable prospect of improvement.

I generally agree on all three points. Allow to expand a bit on each.

1. Self-defense is an absolute right. If one reasonably believes that one is in imminent danger of death or severe bodily injury, one has the right to defend oneself by any means necessary.

2. Defense of other innocents may not only be a right, but a duty.

In practical terms, one is obligated to be certain that one truly understands the situation. What may appear to be an armed street mugging may in fact be an undercover police officer attempting to make an arrest.

3. Euthanasia MAY be an acceptable decision, with the stipulation that active euthanasia (as opposed to passive, e.g., disconnecting a feeding tube or ventilator) ought only to be the decision of its subject.

I also think that the State has the right to put perpetrators of particularly heinous crimes to death, assuming they are determined to be unambiguously guilty. The torture-murder of a child comes to mind as the most extreme example I can think of.

It actually matters little to me if such a criminal is executed or merely locked up under very high security and never, ever, given the opportunity for parole. The point is that such a person has permanently forfeited his right to free interaction with other humans. The State has a right, and in fact a duty, to protect its citizens from monsters.

Mental illness and repentance are irrelevant. Such people have no further right to freedom, period.

[Fallibleone]

What if the mental illness can be cured, and is, after the crime?

[cnorman18]

What if the mental illness can be cured, and is, after the crime?

A fair question.

If the cause of the illness was unambiguously physiological, a brain tumor or the like, that might be grounds for a conditional release.

If the "cure," however, consists of therapy or taking anger-management classes or some such, that is another matter. Historically, such treatments do not have a particularly good track record. I would say that confinement in a high-security mental hospital would be a minimum.

After 20 or 30 years of confinement, if the perpetrator has shown no sign of anything other than an intense regret for his actions and a totally cooperative attitude, a highly supervised and conditional release to a halfway house or other such facility might be a possibility. That's as far as I go.

[Fallibleone]

Yes, I can see the reasoning there. An unambiguously physiological problem requires a physiological 'cure' - which can be measured and assessed and its effectiveness observed; a problem simply concerning someone's frame of mind, I gather, would be more difficult to identify and 'cure', and not only that, more difficult to monitor afterwards also. I see how there would be a need for very long-term admittance to a mental hospital, simply to ensure that the public is safe if nothing else.