

Well, I've said that when an innocent person has been executed, this is
objectively a murder.  However, who is at blame is another question.
It seems that the entire society that sanctions any sorts of executions--
realizing the risks--is to blame.


Yes, but there is also a probablity that you will kill someone doing
any raondom activity.  Presumably, you had not isolated yourself totally
from the rest of society because of this.


And I argue that our law system is a similar risk.  Perhaps an innocent
person will be punished someday, but we work to prevent this.  In fact,
many criminals go free as a result of our trying to prevent punishment
of innocents.


But, such accidents are to be totally expected, given the numner of vehicals
on the road.  Again, the blame is on society.


Yes, but the state is not at fault in such a case.  The state can only do
so much to prevent false witnesses.


Okay, so this is what you call murder.  But, the question is whether or not
all such "murders" are wrong.  Are you saying that all taking of human life
is wrong, no matter what the circumstances?


But, this is basically how it works.  Society accepts the risk that an
innocent person will be murdered by execution.  And, every member of
society shares this blame.  And, most people's definitions of murder
include some sort of malicious intent, which is not involved in an
execution, is it?


Murder violates the golden rule.  Executions do not, because by allowing
it at all, society implicitly accepts the consequences no matter who the
innocent victim is.


Reading the minds of the jury would certainly tell whether or not a conviction
was moral or not.  But, in an objective system, only the absolute truth
matters, and the jury system is one method to approximate such a truth.  That
is, twelve members must be convinced of a truth.


But then, if we read the minds of these people, we would know that the
conviction was unfair.


Yes, while we could objectively determine the difference (if we knew all
possible information), we can't always determine the difference in our
flawed system.  I think that our system is almost as good as possible,
but it still isn't objectively perfect.  You see, it doesn't matter if
we *know* it is fair or not.  Objectively, it is either fair or it is not.


But what we know has no effect on an objective system.


Why are you so sure?


Why is *your* reality important?


But, we can assume that the system is fairly decent, at least most likely.
And, you realize that the correctness of our system says nothing about a
totally ideal and objective system.


Well, we can have an ideal system, but the working system can not be ideal.
We can only hope to create a system that is as close an approximation to
the ideal system as possible.


Yes, we all bear the responsibility.  Most people seem willing to do this.


We must realize the consequences of all our actions.  Why do you keep
separating the justice system from the pack?


I don't think our country has an objective system, but I think such an
objective system can exist, in theory.  Without omniscience, an objective
system is not possible in practice.