Topic: Criminals with amnesia, should they still be punished?

@Rift
Someone with amnesia is NOT "essentially a new person". They are the exact same person, with some of their memories no longer actively accesible to them. That is not a correct view of what amnesia is/does.

And i honestly can't believe you said "Victims of the crime would no doubt want justice, but justice won't repair the damage. Whatever the criminal did can't be changed" — so then why should ANYONE be punished for anything? Do you not see the tremendous hole in this logic? Murderers and rapists should all run free, because punishing them won't repair the damage, right? Sigh.

@the thread in general
To take this hypothetical/philospohical discussion to the next level, what if someone committed a crime, and the heinous or horrific nature of their actions resulted in a psychological-trauma-induced amnesia (aka a "mental block"). What then?

@the_shypdar: Depends, was the heinous crime premeditated?

Either way, i guess. Whether an act was premeditated would affect the level of the crime being charged and the potential punishment (eg, manslaughter vs murder), but regardless of premeditation or not, a crime would still have been committed.

I think he confused justice with vengeance in his statement.

Yeah, but then there's still the distinction of premeditated murder versus a crime of passion scenario. The latter case, obviously, would grant the perpetrator in question a bit more leniency/sympathy than the former, in my opinion...

If it was premeditated, then the perpetrator's guilt really wouldn't faze me if I was sitting on the jury. Why didn't the guilt manifest itself in the planning stages? On the other hand, if the case was, say, a domestic dispute gone wrong or something along those lines, then there would definitely be room for sympathy/acquittal...

Reminds me of a case when some guy was sleep walking, drove his car to his grandparents house and killed his grandparents while they were sleeping, he was tested for sleep walking and came back positive, (I guess wtaching him when he's sleeping) and he still went to prison even though he had no recollection of commiting the crime.

Therefore, bringing it into this scenario, even though YOU might not be able to remember what happened, EVERYBODY else does. Whether you can remember or not, the crime has still been commited and you should therefore go to jail, easy as that really.

In that particular scenario there isn't a big difference. When you lock someone up, they can't commit any more crimes. Punishing rapists and murderers won't repair the damage, but it will prevent future crimes from being committed. Why should someone be punished if it won't do any good? I guess "vengeance" is a better word, but in this situation sending them to prison wouldn't help anyone.

as someone said (paraphrasing here): crimes are prosecuted on the basis of the mental state of the criminal at the time of the crime. IF (and it's a big IF) it could be proven the perpetrator suffered from true amnesia and remembered nothing of it, then he would most like to incarcerated in a mental facility/hospital til he was deemed mentally fit to stand trial. if that does not occur, then he would be there for life.

i don't believe amnesia makes someone like a 'new born baby'. a crime was committed. his remembering it does not undo that. there needs to be some sort of accountability.

ok take this logic (please dont give me that this isnt a movie crap)

i commited a crime then i cloned my self with that memory intacked the original dies your left with a clone who has the memory of committing it but it wasnt him that did it, it was the original that did it however they are still the same person in aspect

are you going to throw that clone in jail because he's literally the same person who did said crime even though in a complicated way the clone didnt do it

now take that and apply it to the person with total amnesia

The problem here is that there are a lot of grey areas in these scenarios, so it always ends up being a lose-lose situation in some way or another.

@Rift
But Prevention is not the only reason for punishment.

/me accesses the Shypdar's mental database for his first-year criminal law class notes

The general theories for legal/criminal punishment:

Prevention (aka Specific Deterrence), which is obviously to prevent the same individual from committing the same or similar crime.
General Deterrence, which is to dole out punishment in an effort to deter others from committing a same or similar crime.
Rehabilitaion, which are forms of punishment that work towards correcting the individual's behavior.
Denunciation, which is the concept of the punishment serving as the public-at-large saying "hey, that behavior is BAD!"
Retribution, which would fall under the "vengence" category (though "vengence" is a wholly different concept, really). Eg; the retribution theory for capital punishment would be that since someone committed murder, they should pay with their own life.

/end Professor moment
^{The Bell does not dismiss you, I dismiss you!}

@BlackFira: you cloned yourself with memory intact. had he been born a complete blank and given the opportunity to form his own memories and live his own life separate from you, maybe you'd have more of a point, but as it stands he's still you, with the same mindset, ideas, and capability of doing whatever heinous crime(s) you committed all over again should he ever recover from the amnesia. lock him in a max security facility until he remembers (so that he can be tried and convicted properly) or dies, whichever comes first.

@31 "the retribution theory for capital punishment would be that since someone committed murder, they should pay with their own life."

while i can understand it i cant justify it because of how backwards that is for example someone killed my wife dont have one or is dating at the moment lol that guy deserves to be punish with death sentence well now if thats the case someone who knows that person who got the killed is going to want to kill me now the person is going to get killed by someone who knows me because they think that person deserves it

do anyone not see how backwards that punishment idealy is its a cycle looking to repeat it self out of justification

While it is perfectly sensible for one to have a viewpoint opposing capital punishment (especially when approaching it from the retribution theory), your analysis is not accurate. In your hypothetical, your loved one is murdered, and then the murder is executed for his/her crime. But you are not the one who executes the murderer. The murderer is executed by the government, thus there is no reason/justification for one of the murderer's loved ones to want murder you.

What you are alluding to is more of the philosophy of "an eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind", which is a wholly different (though not necessarily unrelated) discussion.

no, because the STATE is responsible for executions. you have to look at the semantics of 'killing', 'murdering' and 'executing' i guess, but they are not the same, imho. (i am not in favour of the death penalty mainly because of those who have been cleared thru DNA evidence. i'd rather 10 guilty parties remain in prison for the rest of their lives than 1 innocent person be executed. climbing off soapbox now

man are u intelligent it hurts my brain never thought my self be interested in conversing in this discussion, well i guess we can be thankfull this isnt the medival times where people would take this into thier own hands without fair trial so im glad we have things like the goverment but at the same time im not glad i always wondered where in history did the fudge anyone think it would be a good idea to have someone in power over people when it wasnt originally around in the first place

lol i am now thinking of the green mile movie where a person got excuted for a crime he clearly didnt do but he was there at the scene holding twins body crying with blood on his hands so they just blame the next person they see

and i dont even like that movie that much

@BlackFira: read the books. they were much better than the movie IMO :3

that said, can we please keep to the original topic and off our personal soapboxes, please? :3

wasnt even aware there was books on it lol of course i saw this movie for the first time a looooooong time ago maybe 9 or 13 years old as im 20 right now so its probably ancient

and yes i'll try

since the original topic is philosophical in nature, almost any reply is going to include a soapbox...it's the nature of the beast.