Are you under the impression that "It's illegal to kill him; therefore he isn't a threat." is a valid argument?!?
Where did you get that from? Not from what I said.
[digression]Is that really the law in Australia? In the U.S. it's legal to kill in self-defense when your attacker is "only" trying to commit rape or serious bodily harm.[/digression]
So in America you would be legally justified in shooting and killing someone trying to commit rape? Really?
But the fact of what the legal system will judge has no implications as to the fact of whether a particular murderer is a threat to soceity. Societies can construct legal systems any way they please.
I was commenting on the issue of ethical laws, excessive force, taking justice into your own hands, delivering punishment that exceeds the crime, ie, killing someone for stealing your car when you already have the thief under control.
Are you suggesting that something being illegal implies it's unethical? You know the Underground Railroad was illegal, right?
Irrelevant, a particular law may be or it may not be. Whether a law is fair and just, therefore ethical, is a matter of examining the law in question. I was referring to the legality and ethics of execution, either by the individual or by the state.
And are you suggesting, even more absurdly, that something being illegal in Australia implies it's unethical in other jurisdictions?!? Your claim that not being under threat means you have legally inadequate reason to kill someone may well be Australian law; it's simply incorrect in California. Here it's perfectly legal for an unthreatened prison warden to kill a condemned prisoner once there's a death warrant for him in effect.
What's absurd is that you make your own interpretation of my comments, and run with the flaws as if there is no chance you are mistaken. I'd suggest that you read more carefully and ask questions before arguing against strawman of your own making.
Let's suppose for the sake of discussion that your inference isn't fallacious, as far as it goes. Well, now you have a lemma. Where does it take you? We weren't arguing about whether it's unethical. We were arguing about whether a murderer in custody is a threat to society. How do you get from "Killing him is unethical." to "He is not a threat."? You're familiar with Hume having pointed out the difficulty of getting from "is" to "ought", I presume? You seem to be leaping the chasm in the opposite direction. How are you getting from an "ought" to an "is"?
It's not fallacious, it's the law: the use of excessive force. And the argument was broader than ''whether a murderer in custody is a threat to society'' because of the issue of justification for killing. Whether it is justified to kill someone who is in custody and has been removed from society. I think it suits you to go off into another direction altogether.
So your claim that a convict in custody is no longer a threat to society isn't true.
You make these proclamations as if they are Gospel. How is a killer incarcerated within a high security prison a threat to people on the outside....do you think he spits over the exercise yard walls, or something? What is the threat?
I.e., you're trying to hairsplit between "threat" and "threat to society". Since when are people no longer part of society once they're in the prison system? Are you taking for granted that nobody you personally care about will ever shoplift and get arrested and go to jail and be assigned a psychopath for a cellmate?
For heavens sake...any reasonable person would not need the condition of incarceration, individuals that are separated from the rest of the population living their normal lives on the outside, explained. Do you really need me to explain that someone locked in a high security cell cannot stroll down Main street, stop for a coffee, or carry out a murder? You are the one splitting hairs.
What is it you think I'm implying, apart from implying you should quit telling people jailed murderers aren't a threat to society?
You tell tell me. You made the remark - ''Prison guards do not have superhuman abilities either. Guards get careless. A lot of guards really don't give a damn if prisoners attack one another -- sometimes they'll even set up the situations themselves, to make up for no longer being personally allowed to beat up prisoners. And most of the inmates killed by the murderers on my list would be perceived by a fair fraction of the population as having it coming, so good riddance; this limits the effort that will be put into protecting them.''
So what does ''good riddance'' (even if that is not your personal view) imply?
And this still misses the point that prison guards are trained for the job of handling risky prisoners, they made their choice of career in full knowledge of the problems of their work place.
Of course prisons are a part of society, but the prison environment is separated from external society. A point that should not need explaining because that is the purpose of constructing prisons.
Anybody who says a murderer in custody is no longer a threat to society is evidently not applying reason (1) since he's refusing to admit the victims of his policy even exist. So he's presumably applying reason (2). That means he's choosing the policy that makes him feel better about himself, and deceiving himself in order to get that better feeling. That's pathetic. We're killing people by proxy; the least we can do is tell the truth to ourselves about it.
Only if you want to play a pedantic game of splitting hairs. Prisons are institutions of society and their purpose is to isolate or remove individuals that pose a public risk from the public - 'public' meaning society at large...if that needs spelling out. How many violent inmates escape high security prisons?
