2nd degree murder

Looking at the legal descriptions of third-degree and second-degree, elevation of the Floyd killing to second-degree is quite risky. It requires proving intent to kill, rather than depraved indifference to human life. That's a heavy legal burden.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 3, 2020

Ahmaud Arbery

I wonder how many people who profess outrage at the murder of Ahmaud Arbery believe his killers should be executed? Or do they oppose the death penalty? It's an easy call for me, but that's because I support capital punishment. The execrable Dylann Roof is still alive because, thanks to the political correctness  of the Obama DOJ, he was charged with hate crimes rather than murder. 

Life imprisonment

Another reason why you can't trust progressives on crime:

https://mynorthwest.com/1703297/rantz-washington-democrats-release-murderers-end-life-without-parole/

New frontiers in global warming activism

https://time.com/5717676/asthma-inhalers-and-climate/

Asthmatics must do their part to save the planet by dying en masse.

Give your life to Christ

An off-duty police officer named Amber Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean in his own apartment which she claimed she mistook for her apartment. Brandt Jean, Botham's brother, addresses Guyger shortly after her sentencing:

Epstein and assisted suicide

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/jeffrey-epstein-hyoid/

If it was "suicide," he had a lot of help :-)

Never ascribe to malice what may be explained by stupidity

There's a raging debate about how Jeffrey Epstein died: was he killed or did he kill himself? 

1. One explanation appeals to Hanlon's razor ("Never ascribe to malice what may be explained by stupidity"). Given overworked, underpaid prison guards with a low-prestige job, there's not much incentive to give it their best effort. And if they belong to public sector unions, which makes it virtually impossible to fire them, there's even less incentive to do a good job. All things being equal, incompetence is the default explanation. And I think that may well be the right explanation in the case of Epstein.

2. There are, however, other considerations:

• He was a sex-trafficker for the power elite. He had many powerful, well-connected clients who stood to benefit from silencing him before he could finger them. If you're doomed, you might as well take some others with you on the way down. You have nothing to lose. Let them share your fate. 

• A bombshell document was released the day before, naming some of his clients, with teasers about another anonymous clients. Naturally there was curiosity about the next names to drop. 

• I imagine it's not hard to put a hit on someone in prison. Heck, we read about drug lords who continue to run their operation behind bars. Prison guards are easily bribed.

3. So the timing of his death was very suspicious. But perhaps that was a coincidence. Coincidences happen in real life. 

4. Ordering a hit on a witness is risky. There's the danger that the hit will be traced by to the culprit. However, that's a comparative risk assessment. There's the opposite danger that the witness will implicate the culprit. So despite the risk, some witnesses are in fact bumped off. 

5. The ways to kill yourself in a prison cell must be quite limited. Since these are so limited and so well-known, they are easily eliminated. Don't architects  take that into account when designing prison cells? 

6. Thus far the official story is bureaucratic bungling. If, however, it was an inside job, then it's not surprising that culprits have a cover story. 

Mind you, that illustrates a danger of conspiracy theories, since almost anything can be made consistent with a conspiracy theory. So we need more than consistency to make it plausible. 

7. In addition, there are different ways a hit might be carried out. In the case of a suicidal witness who already has the motive to off himself, you just provide him with the means, and opportunity (unsupervised time). That's easy to cover up. If he doesn't take the bait, you might have a backup plan: bribe a prisoner serving a life sentence to kill him, in exchange for certain favors.

Was his death the result of foul play? Not having firm opinion one way or the other, I suspend judgment. 

No Child Left Alive

Christian mission meets cultural relativism

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/09/the-right-to-kill-brazil-infanticide/

Self-murder

Let's combine two traditional arguments:

i) Premeditated unjustifiable homicide is murder

ii) Murder ought to be a capital offense

i) Suicide is premeditated unjustifiable self-homicide

ii) Suicide is self-murder

iii) Suicide ought to be a capital offense

The penalty for attempted suicide or conspiracy to commit suicide should be execution. People who try to kill themselves deserve to be killed.

That's a reductio ad absurdum for a traditional argument against suicide. A dilemma. 

The appeal of the self-murder argument is that it's simple. But sometimes simple arguments are simplistic.

The "self-murder" objection should be retired. There are better arguments against suicide. 

Making the cut

An atheist on human worth:

There is no magic objective standard to say when an organism is a person. We rely entirely on cultural perspectives to define when we grant that organism the rights and privileges of a full member of the culture. This does not imply that I personally approve of societies that treat a newborn as expendable, only that it’s clear that there is no objective or scientific boundary. We always rely on an arbitrary definition. 

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/09/03/anti-choicers-arguing-against-me-in-absentia/

Although abortion is his immediate point of reference is abortion, notice that his position on abortion is just a special case of a general principle. Who makes the cut applies to anyone, in any condition, at any time of life.