Killing justice

Until recently, slavery was legal in most of the world. The United States only outlawed slavery in 1865, during the American Civil War, and in Thailand, slavery only became illegal in 1912 - barely 100 years ago. But although legal, was all of that slavery during thousands of years when our ancestors bought and sold human beings, treating them as property, ever morally OK, or was it always morally wrong?

In "Indonesia executions: Foreign envoys summoned to prison" (2015), the BBC News reports that the Indonesian government appears to be preparing to execute nine foreigners and an Indonesian for drug trafficking, despite continued requests by foreign governments not to kill their convicted citizens, which requests the Indonesian courts and President have refused.

As you might already have guessed from my introduction, I don't think that being legal is the same as being moral. And I am sure that executing people for drug dealing is definitely wrong; I mean that it is unjust for governments to kill people who have been dealing in drugs. Since alchol is another popular drug of addiction, if it were just to execute people for buying and selling heroin or marijuana, it would also be just to execute people who produce and sell alcohol, but do we really think that the owners of Beer Singha should be executed for their massive drug dealing, which "drug trade has caused huge damage to" Thailand ("Indonesia Executions," 2014). In the statistics for the latest Songkran road deaths that destroyed families and caused massive further damage, alcohol was involved in 47% of the accidents.

Another problem with the death penalty is that mistakes are made. In the US recently, one man was released after more than 30 years in prison for a crime which new evidence proved he did not commit. And if the US regularly makes such serious mistakes, how often do other countries put innocent people in prison? Too often, a court verdict of guilty is wrong. I don't think this is true in the cases in Indonesia: there really doesn't seem to be any doubt that they are all guilty of drug dealing.

And I'm not even sure that the death penalty is always wrong. I think for some crimes it might be just; for example, multiple murders purely for financial gain or fun might deserve execution. But drug dealers, rapists, and corrupt politicians are not murderers, so horrible as their crimes are, they should not be exucuted; and in the case of drug dealers, it is not even obvious that they have done anything wrong, merely something illegal. Whether by executing drug dealers or allowing slavery, we should worry when the law itself kills justice.

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Reference

Indonesia executions: Foreign envoys summoned to prison. (2015, April 25). BBC News World Australia. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-32443037