Is an execution always murder?

[DrZoidberg]

I'm watching a documentary on Auschwitz and the speaker keeps referring to the holocaust as murder. He puts so much stress on the initial "m" that I'm worried he'll have an aneurysm. And it strikes me how this takes away from the emotional power of the documentary. The terrifying thing about the holocaust was how the annihilation of Jews was lawful, ie executions. And this isn't the first time. Most references to the holocaust typically refer to it as the "murder" of unwanted elements.

So if it's not the Nazi German law that mattered for the classification, is it some higher law? What law would that be? Doesn't that just make murder vs execution arbitrary? A bit like a gauge of how much you approve of the execution? When I think back on everything I've read about the American executions of criminals I haven't yet heard them be referred to as "murders". It's always "capital punishment" or "execution". Even by people who I know think that all capital punishments are wrong. So what makes the German executions special as to always warrant it being called "murder"?

 

[Bomb#20]

And it strikes me how this takes away from the emotional power of the documentary. The terrifying thing about the holocaust was how the annihilation of Jews was lawful, ie executions.

Well, in the first place, hardly any of those murders were executions. The Jews were being killed for being Jews, not because they'd been convicted of doing anything there was a law against. There isn't any standard category of lawful homicide that killing somebody for being a Jew can go in. They weren't killed in self-defense or defense of another; they weren't enemy combatants; they weren't collateral damage; they weren't accident victims. And it wasn't manslaughter or negligence. So what's left but murder? To say it wasn't murder merely because the Nazis had passed a law saying everything Hitler ordered was legal is to create a whole new category of lawful homicide.

And in the second place, the whole Third Reich was illegal. The Nazis created it by a coup d'etat play-acting at being a constitutional amendment. They only got the required 2/3 majority in the Reichstag by having the SA threaten bodily harm or death to parliament members who wouldn't vote for it. That was not a lawful amendment procedure under the Weimar constitution.

So if it's not the Nazi German law that mattered for the classification, is it some higher law? What law would that be? Doesn't that just make murder vs execution arbitrary? A bit like a gauge of how much you approve of the execution? When I think back on everything I've read about the American executions of criminals I haven't yet heard them be referred to as "murders". It's always "capital punishment" or "execution". Even by people who I know think that all capital punishments are wrong. So what makes the German executions special as to always warrant it being called "murder"?

I take it this isn't really intended to be a Nazi thread, but rather a philosophy of law thread. It appears to me that in order to argue that if Nazi lawful Jew-killing is murder then American lawful capital punishment is murder, you need to be relying on two inconsistent criteria for lawfulness. People normally call the holocaust murder and executing murderers non-murder based on ideas from natural law and/or common law, which historically were the philosophical underpinnings of the American legal system. It appears from the above that you don't agree with natural law or common law theory. So what do you regard as the criterion for lawfulness?

The usual alternative philosophies are Supreme Wisher theory and Legal Positivism. If you accept Supreme Wisher theory, who's the Supreme Wisher? The People(TM)? If so, the Nazis forfeited any claim that anything they were doing was legal the first time they rigged an election. The only philosophy of law I know of that implies the holocaust was legal is the "The Supreme Wisher is Hitler" theory.

Contrariwise, if you accept Legal Positivism, then the whole issue becomes moot. There isn't any basis in the first place for saying the holocaust wasn't murder because it wasn't illegal. It was illegal, because the Nuremberg court said it was.

(Incidentally, none of this is capital punishment advocacy and I don't want to degrade your thread into yet another death penalty debate. I voted to abolish it in California. But I'm not the Supreme Wisher.)

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I would say no. Murder means an unlawful killing and executions mean that the killings were done lawfully. One can argue that the law which led to the execution shouldn't have been a law in the first place, but if everything was done through legal processes, then the word murder doesn't apply.

By that definition, the Nazis killing the Jews wasn't an act of murder. Assuming that the concentration camps were operating legally and the German government authorized the death penalty for the crime of being Jewish (or something similar - I'm not sure of the details of how all that was set up), then it doesn't count as murder. It was an evil genocide to be sure, but it was a legally performed one.

 

[fast]

Is an execution always murder? No. For example, an execution sanctioned by a US court is not murder. An execution sanctioned by a US court is legal, and murder is illegal.

 

[laughing dog]

Using legalistic concepts of murder, an execution by gov't as punishment for a crime is not murder. However, if one means "an unjustifiable taking of a life", then the executions of Jews by the Nazis were murder. In fact, capital punishment could fit under that definition as well.

 

[bilby]

Depends how you define 'Murder'.

Personally, I define murder as the premeditated and deliberate killing of one or more people.

By that definition, all capital punishment is murder, as is much of the killing in battle.

Whether or not murder is ever justified, and if so, under what circumstances, is a whole other discussion though.

I see no reason not to call dropping bombs on an enemy tank during a war, with intent to kill the tank crew 'murder'; but I equally see no reason to declare that it is always morally or legally wrong to do so.

If, instead, we define murder as the illegal, premeditated and deliberate killing of one or more people, then that eliminates capital punishment and battlefield killings; But in that case it likely also eliminates the killing of Jews in Nazi death camps too - although that then leaves aside another huge debate about what is or is not legal. If the Nazis are the government, and they pass laws requiring Jews to be killed, then killing Jews is legal - unless you declare their government to be illegal, voiding their laws, and rendering breaking of such laws a duty.

The whole question seems pointless to me; the fine details of what the word 'murder' should or should not encompass are irrelevant. What matters is the wider moral question that allows us to consider any given act of killing, and ask 'is this moral'? Whether or not it is also murder seems not to really matter.

 

[fast]

Depends how you define 'Murder'.

Personally, I define murder as the premeditated and deliberate killing of one or more people.

By that definition, all capital punishment is murder, as is much of the killing in battle.

Whether or not murder is ever justified, and if so, under what circumstances, is a whole other discussion though.

I see no reason not to call dropping bombs on an enemy tank during a war, with intent to kill the tank crew 'murder'; but I equally see no reason to declare that it is always morally or legally wrong to do so.

If, instead, we define murder as the illegal, premeditated and deliberate killing of one or more people, then that eliminates capital punishment and battlefield killings; But in that case it likely also eliminates the killing of Jews in Nazi death camps too - although that then leaves aside another huge debate about what is or is not legal. If the Nazis are the government, and they pass laws requiring Jews to be killed, then killing Jews is legal - unless you declare their government to be illegal, voiding their laws, and rendering breaking of such laws a duty.

The whole question seems pointless to me; the fine details of what the word 'murder' should or should not encompass are irrelevant. What matters is the wider moral question that allows us to consider any given act of killing, and ask 'is this moral'? Whether or not it is also murder seems not to really matter.

But I don't want to be held legally accountable for my actions that are legally allowed. We should have the ability to tell (what is) from (what isn't) when it comes to the issue of legality, even when we can't always agree on matters of morality. If I do in fact have the legal right to do something that some may declare to be unjust, then do so let the law be clear that I am not to be held legally responsible for doing so. That way, I can do as I legally wish without fear of legal reprisal when it comes to matters that are legal yet morally questionable.

When I stood before the judge and spoke of my actions not being wrong despite being illegal, I was met with the very clear message that he cared not about what is right and wrong but only about what is legal and what is not, so till this day, I have longed to turn the tables hoping to stand accused of wrongfully doing a legal act. See, if the people of our nation are gonna play bad ass and hold me legally accountable for my actions, then please make the law clear so that I'm not oppressed by the wide-array of multi-shaded moral views of others.

 

[DBT]

Execution is an ethical issue, a question of whether it is ethical for an organization, state, group or individual to execute someone when the individual being killed is not an immediate threat to anyone (incarcerated or restrained), hence the killing is not done in self defence.

 

[Bomb#20]

When I stood before the judge and spoke of my actions not being wrong despite being illegal, I was met with the very clear message that he cared not about what is right and wrong but only about what is legal and what is not, so till this day, I have longed to turn the tables hoping to stand accused of wrongfully doing a legal act.

You could get your wish. Become an abortionist, wait for the U.S. to be turned into the Republic of Gilead, and then when the former abortionists are all being rounded up and prosecuted for capital murder, explain to the judge that your actions weren't illegal at the time you performed them.

 

[fast]

When I stood before the judge and spoke of my actions not being wrong despite being illegal, I was met with the very clear message that he cared not about what is right and wrong but only about what is legal and what is not, so till this day, I have longed to turn the tables hoping to stand accused of wrongfully doing a legal act.

You could get your wish. Become an abortionist, wait for the U.S. to be turned into the Republic of Gilead, and then when the former abortionists are all being rounded up and prosecuted for capital murder, explain to the judge that your actions weren't illegal at the time you performed them.

I spoke in haste. I know better.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Execution is an ethical issue, a question of whether it is ethical for an organization, state, group or individual to execute someone when the individual being killed is not an immediate threat to anyone (incarcerated or restrained), hence the killing is not done in self defence.

Doesn't that make the word meaningless? It says more about a societies power-dynamics than any right or wrong. So then everything is murder?

 

[DBT]

Execution is an ethical issue, a question of whether it is ethical for an organization, state, group or individual to execute someone when the individual being killed is not an immediate threat to anyone (incarcerated or restrained), hence the killing is not done in self defence.

Doesn't that make the word meaningless? It says more about a societies power-dynamics than any right or wrong. So then everything is murder?

Not if murder is defined as killing someone for a perceived benefit. Something to be gained: revenge, retribution, making an example (sending a message) for others to take note of what happens to them if they transgress, etc.

Self defence entails preserving life, your own and/or others around you, while facing an immediate threat, which may be distinguished from killing the attacker immediately after the threat is over. Which becomes revenge or retribution for instigating the attack.

I think that there is a reasonable distinction to be made between self defence and murder or 'manslaughter'

 

[fromderinside]

So a drunk at a party goes out back and kills my son with one sucker punch in an alley. No one intended more than hurt. Circumstances made his punch a death blow. Police call it homicide. One intended harm against another succeeding beyond expectations. Now he's in jail facing perhaps a decade behind bars. The other is in a box on a dresser in our bedroom.

If one is murder then all are murder as far as I can tell from a social perspective. The magnitude or situation of the killings seem of little consequence beyond the consequences to those involved. One dies at the hands of another, though anger, a state decree or a maddened nation's blood lust. All murder, all taking life, all avoidable I believe.

So maybe rather than classifying murder as something different by situation we should be working to remove all murders by social process. That makes more sense to me.

 

[fast]

So a drunk at a party goes out back and kills my son with one sucker punch in an alley. No one intended more than hurt. Circumstances made his punch a death blow. Police call it homicide. One intended harm against another succeeding beyond expectations. Now he's in jail facing perhaps a decade behind bars. The other is in a box on a dresser in our bedroom.

If one is murder then all are murder as far as I can tell from a social perspective. The magnitude or situation of the killings seem of little consequence beyond the consequences to those involved. One dies at the hands of another, though anger, a state decree or a maddened nation's blood lust. All murder, all taking life, all avoidable I believe.

So maybe rather than classifying murder as something different by situation we should be working to remove all murders by social process. That makes more sense to me.

All murders are homicides, but not all homicides are murder. The situation described sounds like homicide but not murder.

The consequences may be the same for the loss of life, but it still matters whether the loss of life by the hands of another was accidental or intentional.

And yes, if there is some social process that makes for a better world, ... may we adopt it and avoid unnecessary loss of life.

 

[credoconsolans]

I would say no. Murder means an unlawful killing and executions mean that the killings were done lawfully. One can argue that the law which led to the execution shouldn't have been a law in the first place, but if everything was done through legal processes, then the word murder doesn't apply.

By that definition, the Nazis killing the Jews wasn't an act of murder. Assuming that the concentration camps were operating legally and the German government authorized the death penalty for the crime of being Jewish (or something similar - I'm not sure of the details of how all that was set up), then it doesn't count as murder. It was an evil genocide to be sure, but it was a legally performed one.

This.

 

[DBT]

What is deemed lawful by the state is not necessarily ethical.

 

[credoconsolans]

What is deemed lawful by the state is not necessarily ethical.

True, but that wasn't the question of the OP.

The question was: Is an execution always murder?

 

[fast]

What is deemed lawful by the state is not necessarily ethical.

True, but that wasn't the question of the OP.

The question was: Is an execution always murder?

Is. The question is.

 

[DBT]

What is deemed lawful by the state is not necessarily ethical.

True, but that wasn't the question of the OP.

The question was: Is an execution always murder?

If the accepted definition of murder is ''the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another (including executions ordered and carried out by criminal organizations, gangs, etc)'' and a government/state deems it lawful to plan the execution of prisoners and carries out these execution at a planned time (premeditated)....being deemed 'legal,' executions carried out by that government are deemed legal and cannot be defined as being murder.

So the issue becomes a question of ethics. The government of Russia, Stalin's regime, an extreme case as an example, may have considered it legal to carry out executions, so by the given definition, these were not 'murders.'

But were they ethical? I think not.

 

[credoconsolans]

True, but that wasn't the question of the OP.

The question was: Is an execution always murder?

If the accepted definition of murder is ''the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another (including executions ordered and carried out by criminal organizations, gangs, etc)'' and a government/state deems it lawful to plan the execution of prisoners and carries out these execution at a planned time (premeditated)....being deemed 'legal,' executions carried out by that government are deemed legal and cannot be defined as being murder.

So the issue becomes a question of ethics. The government of Russia, Stalin's regime, an extreme case as an example, may have considered it legal to carry out executions, so by the given definition, these were not 'murders.'

But were they ethical? I think not.

Correct.

You have answered the OP's question.

If you want to move into the ethics of the topic, that's a new question.