Does justice have to be so blind?
Happy New Year! I'm back to blogging about the philosophy thought experiments in Julian Baggini's book The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, and this week's thought experiment is one that's always timely.
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Why had Marsha joined the police force? In her own mind, the answer was clear: to protect the public and make sure justice was done. Those considerations were more important than following the rules.
She kept telling herself that, because she feared she lacked the resolve to break the rules in order to stay true to her ideals. A good man had made a terrible mistake, and an innocent woman was dead as a result. But by a sequence of accidents and coincidences, Marsha had enough circumstantial and forensic evidence to convict a different man of the crime. Not only that, but the man she could frame was a nasty piece of work who was certainly responsible for a number of murders. She had merely never been able to gather enough evidence to make the charges stick in court.
She knew that the due process of law left no room for framing, but surely it would be better to get a repeat murderer behind bars than a man who posed no threat to anyone? The justice in that was greater than the injustice of denying a killer the benefits of a fair trial.
Source: Insomnia, directed by Christopher Nolan, 2002.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 229.
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What do you think? Could the ends ever justify the means for a police officer in Marsha's shoes? I'll be back on Friday with my answer, but in the meantime I'd love to hear your thoughts via the comment section below.
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Why had Marsha joined the police force? In her own mind, the answer was clear: to protect the public and make sure justice was done. Those considerations were more important than following the rules.
She kept telling herself that, because she feared she lacked the resolve to break the rules in order to stay true to her ideals. A good man had made a terrible mistake, and an innocent woman was dead as a result. But by a sequence of accidents and coincidences, Marsha had enough circumstantial and forensic evidence to convict a different man of the crime. Not only that, but the man she could frame was a nasty piece of work who was certainly responsible for a number of murders. She had merely never been able to gather enough evidence to make the charges stick in court.
She knew that the due process of law left no room for framing, but surely it would be better to get a repeat murderer behind bars than a man who posed no threat to anyone? The justice in that was greater than the injustice of denying a killer the benefits of a fair trial.
Source: Insomnia, directed by Christopher Nolan, 2002.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 229.
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What do you think? Could the ends ever justify the means for a police officer in Marsha's shoes? I'll be back on Friday with my answer, but in the meantime I'd love to hear your thoughts via the comment section below.
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