Australian Man to be Executed in Singapore

  • Context: News 
  • Thread starter Thread starter loseyourname
  • Start date Start date
Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the impending execution of an Australian man convicted of drug smuggling in Singapore, focusing on the implications of strict drug laws, the morality of the death penalty, and personal responsibility in the context of legal consequences. The conversation touches on ethical dilemmas, societal values, and the nature of justice within different legal frameworks.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Exploratory

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express strong opinions against the death penalty, arguing it reflects a lack of respect for human rights and questioning the ethics of capital punishment.
  • Others assert that the individual bears responsibility for their actions, emphasizing that the decision to smuggle drugs was made knowingly and that the consequences are a result of those choices.
  • There are contrasting views on whether the government or the individual is primarily responsible for the loss of life, with some attributing responsibility to the executioner and others to the smuggler's decisions.
  • Participants discuss the implications of Singapore's strict drug laws and the societal values that underpin them, with some suggesting that the laws are designed to maintain order and safety.
  • Several comments reflect on the nature of risk-taking behavior and the consequences that arise from knowingly engaging in illegal activities.
  • Some participants highlight the distinction between personal accountability and the role of the legal system in administering justice, raising questions about the justification of capital punishment.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

The discussion remains unresolved, with multiple competing views on the morality of the death penalty, the nature of personal responsibility, and the implications of Singapore's drug laws. Participants express differing opinions without reaching a consensus.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference the ethical dilemmas surrounding the death penalty and the varying interpretations of responsibility, suggesting that the discussion is influenced by personal beliefs about justice and legality.

loseyourname
Staff Emeritus
Gold Member
Messages
1,840
Reaction score
5
CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian man convicted of drugs charges in Singapore has lost his final appeal for clemency and will be executed, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Friday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051021/wl_nm/crime_australia_singapore_dc

And I thought California's mandatory sentencing laws sucked.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Physics news on Phys.org
Singapore is well-known for their severe drug laws... must have something to do with promoting risk-tourism :devil:
 
The truncated title really threw me. I thought for a moment that there might be laws in Australia.
 
... nevermind...
 
Last edited:
Death penalty for smuggling :rolleyes: ... life is cheap . Would think the 'picturesque' image of Singapore would also mean some respect for human rights, but well, whatever keeps the streets clean then.
 
This guy has no one to blame but himself. If his life has been cheapened, then it has been done by himself, with his full knowledge and consent.
 
Tom Mattson said:
If his life has been cheapened, then it has been done by himself,
really? I thought it was being done by the executioner. Silly me.
 
Tom Mattson said:
This guy has no one to blame but himself. If his life has been cheapened, then it has been done by himself, with his full knowledge and consent.
What is the death penalty except a decision made by 'someone else' to judge the 'recipient' unworthy to live, as such strip the person of all possible rights as a human?
 
Although I disagree with death penalty, I have no sympathy for this guy since he was smuggling heroin. Imagine he wasn't arrested and wanted to continue his job... :devil: (Remember I didn't say Singapore government is doing the right thing!)
 
  • #10
PerennialII said:
What is the death penalty except a decision made by 'someone else' to judge the 'recipient' unworthy to live, as such strip the person of all possible rights as a human?

It's not as though the government of Singapore picked this guy out of a crowd and condemned him to death. The decision to smuggle heroin was made by the smuggler. The road to his condemnation starts there.

Singapore has laws, and those laws are to be obeyed on their soil. If someone breaks those laws and he gets caught, then he has to pay the price. What if you don't like Singapore's laws? Then don't live there, don't visit there, and certainly don't traffic heroin through there.

Smurf said:
really? I thought it was being done by the executioner. Silly me.

Do you always converse like this, without making any point?
 
Last edited:
  • #11
This guy took his chances and his luck ran out. Nothing more to it. He was fully aware of the laws.

This certainly isn't one of those cases where a couple of high school/college kids backpacking in Malaysia get a life/death sentence for carrying weed on them.
 
  • #12
Tom Mattson said:
It's not as though the government of Singapore picked this guy out of a crowd and condemned him to death. The decision to smuggle heroin was made by the smuggler. The road to his condemnation starts there.
Singapore has laws, and those laws are to be obeyed on their soil. If someone breaks those laws and he gets caught, then he has to pay the price. What if you don't like Singapore's laws? Then don't live there, don't visit there, and certainly don't traffic heroin through there.
Sure, true to the point. Doesn't address the ethical dilemma surrounding death penalty, which has to do with laws of Singapore in the first place and how they value the life of offenders.
 
  • #13
PerennialII said:
Sure, true to the point. Doesn't address the ethical dilemma surrounding death penalty, which has to do with laws of Singapore in the first place and how they value the life of offenders.

Well, I wasn't trying to address the issue of the death penalty in the big picture. I am highlighting the plain fact that somewhere along the way, probably gradually, this guy made a decision that his life was worth no more than the street value of the heroin that he smuggled. He is the one who put a price tag on his own life, and he alone is responsible for cheapening it.
 
  • #14
Yep, he did decide to risk it, and the government of Singapore also decided that drug offenders don't have 'the worth' to continue living.
 
  • #15
Tom Mattson said:
Do you always converse like this, without making any point?
I don't know. Ask around, I'm sure there's some people here who'd like to say a thing or two about me.
 
  • #16
Tom Mattson said:
He is the one who put a price tag on his own life, and he alone is responsible for cheapening it.
Nope.
The ones who kill him, kill him, and are the ones responsible for his death.
That is an undeniable fact.
Whether or not they are justified in doing so, is quite a different matter.
 
  • #17
arildno said:
Nope.
The ones who kill him, kill him, and are the ones responsible for his death.
That is an undeniable fact.
Whether or not they are justified in doing so, is quite a different matter.
Isn't that kind of like saying there is no cause and effect?
I mean if someone is racing around on a motorcycle with no helmet at let's say 160 mph, and they crash and die...who's fault is that? Clearly this person was doing something that put his life at danger and that person knew about the risk involved.


If you do something that involves a lot of risk and you understand the risk then who's fault is it when you end up dead?


Basically if you believe that it is the courts who are responsible for killing a man they sentenced to death then it is also their fault for putting people in prision. The criminals who commited the crime are therefore not responsible for the fact that they are behind bars...just the courts who put them there.
 
  • #18
Nope.
It depends upon what imagery you adorn the word "responsible" with.

A person who kills another, is responsible for that action. Whether or not we regard that as a justified action is a different matter.

The type of reactions we as a society regard ourselves entitled to implement differs as to whether or not the acting individual can be considered
a) responsible for his actions,
and if so,
b) what type of actions he did, and whether these were justified or not.
 
Last edited:
  • #19
Townsend said:
Isn't that kind of like saying there is no cause and effect?
I mean if someone is racing around on a motorcycle with no helmet at let's say 160 mph, and they crash and die...who's fault is that? Clearly this person was doing something that put his life at danger and that person knew about the risk involved.
False Analogy. If that person was cruising around without a helmet and someone shot him for it.

It's a question of justifying actions. No matter how much you want to believe it, this man did not intend to kill himself.
 
  • #20
arildno said:
Nope.
It depends upon what imagery you adorn the word "responsible" with.
A person who kills another, is responsible for that action. Whether or not we regard that as a justified action is a different matter.

I don't get it. Perhaps I'm just too obtuse to see your point. :confused:
 
  • #21
Tom Mattson said:
This guy has no one to blame but himself. If his life has been cheapened, then it has been done by himself, with his full knowledge and consent.

Another compassionate neocon! I don't know what's more savage this law or that responce. Capital punishent solves nothing!
 
  • #22
arildno said:
Nope.
The ones who kill him, kill him, and are the ones responsible for his death.
That is an undeniable fact.

Obviously, the executioner who takes his life is the one who finally causes his death. I wouldn't deny that. What I do deny is the statement that the government of Singapore is responsible for cheapening this man's life. He took care of that all by himself when he foolishly risked it on such a base thing as smuggling drugs.

PerennialII said:
Yep, he did decide to risk it, and the government of Singapore also decided that drug offenders don't have 'the worth' to continue living.

When a government drafts laws that determine what is and what is not a capital offense, they typically do not have a bunch of offenders in tow waiting to be executed once the law is passed. It's not as though that government ends or even cheapens lives simply by writing such laws into its social contract, because at the time such laws are passed there are no offenders to whom the law applies. In fact I would think that it is safe to assume that governments draft such laws hoping that their penalties will never have to be applied. It only becomes necessary to apply the penalty when people decide to violate the social contract.

So I suppose my point here is that I don't really disagree with your quote above, but at the same time I take no issue with the decision of the government of Singapore for its decision here. You say that their decision to execute cheapens the smuggler's life. I say that he cheapened his own life, and a failure to execute would be tanatamout to cheapening the law.
 
  • #23
Townsend said:
I don't get it. Perhaps I'm just too obtuse to see your point. :confused:
An insane person, a child or a dog are not considered to be morally responsible for their actions, due to defective rationality/lack of free will as the common arguments try to say..

A person who is in possession of his mental faculties and free will is, practically by definition, responsible for every single action he does, criminal or not.
 
  • #24
Smurf said:
False Analogy. If that person was cruising around without a helmet and someone shot him for it.

That's not what I was asking. I'm asking you who is responsbile for a person death if they are doing something that is highly risky? Clearly that person could avoid death by not doing such risky actions so I would say they are responsbile for their own death. Would say that no one is responsilbe?

It's a question of justifying actions.

I was talking about responsiblity.

No matter how much you want to believe it, this man did not intend to kill himself.

You think I thought he wanted to kill himself? What could make you think something like that?
 
Last edited:
  • #25
Anttech said:
Another compassionate neocon! I don't know what's more savage this law or that responce.

LOL, First Smurf and now you. I know I don't visit this Forum very often, but is the standard for discussion around here really so low? What if I said, "Another bleeding heart liberal!"

Take a look at Perennial's posts. He knows how to disagree without being disagreeable.

Capital punishent solves nothing!

Actually it solves the problem of this guy smuggling heroin through Singapore in the future, now doesn't it? :smile:
 
  • #26
arildno said:
A person who is in possession of his mental faculties and free will is, practically by definition, responsible for every single action he does, criminal or not.
That's fine and I thought it was rather obvious to bother mentioning.

What I don't understand is to whom are you assigning responsibility when a criminal who is found guilty and convicted of a crime is sentenced to death. Who is the responsible party for that action?

So far as I can tell you are placing responsibility for that on everyone but the criminal who was responsible for his actions that started the chain of events the lead up to his death. I don't understand how you reasoned that all out. IMO it just does not seem make any sense to think of things like that.
:confused:
 
Last edited:
  • #27
Townsend said:
So far as I can tell you are placing responsibilty for that on everyone but the criminal who was responsible for his actions that started the chain of events the lead upto his death. I don't understand how you resoned that all out. I't just does not make any sense to think of things like that. :confused:
No, no, no!
I haven't anywhere said that I think a particular chain of actions (not events!) following a crime is an unjustified reaction towards the perpetrator of a crime.

Leaving the death penalty debate aside, the Singapore court is certainly entitled to, justified to, and possibly obliged to, sentence this fellow to death, according to Singapore law.

But this by no means reduces the policemen, judges and executioners to unthinking non-responsible humans.
They carry the responsibility of effecting a justified reaction, according to Singapore law.
 
  • #28
Tom Mattson said:
So I suppose my point here is that I don't really disagree with your quote above, but at the same time I take no issue with the decision of the government of Singapore for its decision here. You say that their decision to execute cheapens the smuggler's life. I say that he cheapened his own life, and a failure to execute would be tanatamout to cheapening the law.
I agree with what you're saying, so essentially breaking a law punishable by death is just stupid (=giving your life a "discount", cheapen it), if Singapore want's to uphold such a law they have every right to do so and I and other people against the death denalty simply need to live with it (not allow cheapening here for sure), what we can do is criticize and disagree with the law itself (which appears as another form of cheapening particularly in 'this' end), naturally not the actual law enforcement once the legislator has 'written it down'.
 
  • #29
arildno said:
No, no, no!
I haven't anywhere said that I think a particular chain of actions (not events!) following a crime is an unjustified reaction towards the perpetrator of a crime.

At this point I don't really care about what is justified I just care about who is being assigned the responsibility for the persons death (who is ultimatily the person or persons at fault for this persons death).
 
  • #30
Townsend said:
At this point I don't really care about what is justified I just care about who is being assigned the responsibility for the persons death
It is, of course, the executioner who carries that responsibility.
 

Similar threads

News What is the impact of Russia and China's growing influence in Latin America?
  • · Replies 2 ·
Replies
2
Views
5K