He's not dead yet

[loCAtek]

Cruel to be kind?

One of the doctors who examined Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi observed ruefully last week that “the longer he has gone on living, the more difficult it has been for everyone”.

You can say that again. Last August, four doctors predicted that Megrahi would die within a few weeks. That’s why he was released on “compassionate grounds” by Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, on August 20, after serving only eight years of a 27-year sentence for planting the bomb that killed 270 people when it blew up Pam Am Flight 103.

A year later, and Megrahi is about to attend a party in Libya to celebrate his release. His continued survival ought to be acutely embarrassing for Mr MacAskill, and for Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland’s Government, who endorsed the deal.

But while almost everyone else has been angered, embarrassed or ashamed by Megrahi’s longevity, MacAskill and Salmond have tried to shrug it off, insisting that their decision to let him go was the right one. They claim that their only reason for releasing Megrahi was compassion – yet he had no entitlement to compassion from anyone, and the Justice Minister, of all people, had no right to set justice aside and replace it with something as arbitrary as “compassion”.

Compassion is not a principle of justice. It is not even always a virtue: it is as wrong to pity those who do not deserve it as it is to hate people who have done nothing wrong. There are plenty of vicious killers who do not deserve pity: they deserve justice, which means that they deserve to be punished for their crimes, not released to the comfort of their homes and families. Showing pity in such cases is not a way of doing the right thing. It’s a form of sentimentality – a way of avoiding doing the right thing by diminishing the terrible nature of the crime and congratulating yourself on what a nice, caring person you are, because you can feel compassion for awful criminals.

There is an old proverb that states: “Those who are kind to the cruel soon end up being cruel to the kind.” The logic of putting compassion above justice, as MacAskill and Salmond did, is to fail to punish anyone for anything. Sentimental judges could give in to the stirrings of “compassion” with every case they heard. It would be destructive not only of justice, but of society itself. That’s why MacAskill and Salmond are quite wrong when they insist that compassion and mercy are “about upholding the beliefs that we seek to live by”. On the contrary: indiscriminate doses of compassion and mercy undermine those beliefs.

MacAskill and Salmond have been cruel to many of the people who lost friends, lovers and relatives to the bomb that Megrahi planted. The sight of the murderer arriving in Libya, surrounded by crowds of admirers, was bad enough. But here he is, a year later – and he’s not only alive: he’s celebrating. What can MacAskill or Salmond possibly say, not just to the relatives of Megrahi’s victims, but to anyone who believes that his freedom mocks both those victims and the very idea of justice?

MacAskill and Salmond do not doubt Megrahi’s guilt: it’s not because they think he’s innocent that they believe it was right to free him. Like the three judges who convicted him, and the five more who heard and then rejected his appeal, twice, they accept that he planted the bomb. Which means that Megrahi is guilty of the murder of 270 people. That is a crime so heinous that the man convicted of it ought to die in prison.

“Compassion” cannot, in justice, require his release: only diminishing the seriousness of his crime can do that. And diminishing the seriousness of Megrahi’s crime is precisely what MacAskill did when he freed him last year. He denies Megrahi’s release had anything to do with a deal to placate Libya so as to gain access to its oil. But Realpolitik of that kind would at least be intelligible. The emphasis on compassion is merely repulsive.

[Long Run]

See what happens when you drink too much scotch? Stick with the beer and wine I say.

[Lord Jim]

There is an old proverb that states: “Those who are kind to the cruel soon end up being cruel to the kind.” The logic of putting compassion above justice, as MacAskill and Salmond did, is to fail to punish anyone for anything. Sentimental judges could give in to the stirrings of “compassion” with every case they heard. It would be destructive not only of justice, but of society itself. That’s why MacAskill and Salmond are quite wrong when they insist that compassion and mercy are “about upholding the beliefs that we seek to live by”. On the contrary: indiscriminate doses of compassion and mercy undermine those beliefs.

Very well put.

[Andrew D]

Of course, in Megrahi's case, there was nothing "indiscriminate" about it. Scottish law specifically provides that prisoners diagnosed as having three months or less may be released on compassionate grounds. The notion that such a legal provision could lead to "judges['] ... giv[ing] in to the stirrings of 'compassion' with every case they heard" is a strawman so risible as to merit not even the slightest serious consideration.

[Lord Jim]

Of course, in Megrahi's case, there was nothing "indiscriminate" about it. Scottish law specifically provides that prisoners diagnosed as having three months or less may be released on compassionate grounds.

And to exercise such discretion favorably in a case such as this, where the recipient of that "compassion" is directly complicit in the deaths of 270 innocent people, is a shining example how a misplaced sense of compassion can undermine the beliefs and values we seek to uphold.

[Andrew D]

This exercise of discretion may have been unwise. That does not change the fact that permitting such discretion only in cases in which the person has been diagnosed as having no more than three months to live is nothing like empowering "judges to give in to the stirrings of 'compassion' with every case they heard." The latter remains a strawman so risible as to merit not even the slightest serious consideration.

And, of course, compassion is one of "the beliefs and values we seek to uphold." If we lose sight of it, we reduce our other values to shams.