In 1985, Vernon Madison murdered a police officer, Julius Schulte, in Mobile, Alabama. Madison was due to be executed by lethal injection in January this year, but was given a last-minute stay of execution. After several strokes, he suffers from dementia and memory impairment, and can no longer remember committing the crime.
The Supreme Court will now hear his case. The legal issue hinges on the letter of the law. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that executing someone who cannot understand the reason for their execution violates the 8th Amendment to the US Constitutionâs ban on âcruel and unusual punishmentâ, and in 2016 the Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that âaccording to his perception of reality he never committed murderâ and hence cannot âunderstand the reasonâ for his execution. (That ruling was later overturned by the Supreme Court, which now appears to be having second thoughts about that.)
The legal question, then, seems to turn on whether someone who canât remember committing a crime is nonetheless capable of âunderstanding the reasonâ for their execution. But letâs leave that tricky question to the Supreme Court to decide, and ask a more general, and more philosophical, question: can someone who canât remember performing a given act be genuinely morally responsible (as opposed to satisfying the legal requirements for punishment) for that act?
"In Lockeâs view, if you canât remember performing a given act, then you are literally not the same person as the person who performed that act"
According to one strand of thought stemming from the 18th-Century philosopher John Locke, the answer is ânoâ. Indeed, Locke himself went even further than that: he thought that if you canât remember performing a given act, then you are literally not the same person as the person who performed that act. That might sound decidedly odd, but for Locke, the concept of a âpersonâ is what he calls a âforensicâ notion â that is, more or less, a notion whose purpose is to sort out who is morally responsible for what. According to this more radical proposal, Madisonâs âperception of realityâ that he ânever committed the murderâ is entirely accurate.
So in Lockeâs view, Madison is not, now, morally responsible for the murder (indeed he is not even the same person as the murderer) â and hence does not deserve to be punished for it. But why think that in order to be morally responsible for something, you must be able to remember doing it?
Well, letâs approach this question by doing what philosophers often do, which is to consider some rather more extreme possible cases. Consider Bruce Banner and The Incredible Hulk. Letâs assume that Bruce has no control over whether or when he âturns intoâ the Hulk, and that Bruce canât remember anything about what Hulk has been up to. So when the Hulk transforms back into Bruce, Bruce has no idea what Hulk might have got up to. Suppose Hulk does something really bad. Is Bruce morally responsible for that? There is of course room for dispute about this, but my gut feeling is that the answer is ânoâ: Bruce is not morally responsible, and that is so precisely because he canât remember what the Hulk did. (And Locke would add the extra step: Bruce and the Hulk are therefore different people.)
Things might be different if Bruce did have control over whether or when the Hulk emerged. Suppose Bruce can turn into Hulk â or not â at will, and knows that Hulk is prone to behaving very badly. Then Bruce surely bears at least some responsibility for Hulkâs actions, even though he has no control over exactly what the Hulk will do. Similarly â and much closer to reality â if you know that you tend to behave very badly when very drunk but never remember when you wake up the following morning what you did, that doesnât get you off the hook. After all, if you, in your pre-drunken state, had exerted more control over your own behaviour, by refusing those drinks or staying away from the pub all together, then you wouldnât have indulged in the bad behaviour. So you are still indirectly to blame for that bad behaviour even though you canât remember it, via being morally responsible for having got drunk â something that you knew was likely to lead to bad behaviour.
Even Locke himself can accommodate a version of that claim. In his view you are not literally the same person as the drunk who behaved badly. Nonetheless you are a kind of accomplice to it; without your wilfully drinking in excess, that drunk person would never have come into existence. Youâre morally responsible for that, and hence bear some responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of it. The situation would be a bit like one in which you brainwash or hypnotise someone into holding up a security van. (This is entirely possible; the British illusionist Derren Brown once did it. Although of course it wasnât a real security van.)
"Madison remembers neither the murder nor (letâs assume) any of the events leading up to it. So in Lockeâs view, Madison is not now morally responsible, even in a derivative way, for the murder, whether or not we add Lockeâs extra claim that Madison-now is not the same person as the person who committed the murder"
These kinds of cases suggest that there is something to Lockeâs thought that you canât be morally responsible for something you canât remember doing â as in the Banner/Hulk case where Bruce has no control over Hulkâs behaviour â but that we probably need to distinguish between direct and derived responsibility to deal with tricky cases, such as the case where Bruce does have control over whether Hulk appears or the bad-behaviour-when-drunk case.
The Madison case is not one of those cases, however. In the drunk case, for example, right now you (letâs assume) can at least remember accepting the invitation to go to the pub and to drink at least the first few drinks â knowing full well what the likely consequences would be. So you are morally responsible for all of those things, and hence indirectly morally responsible for the behaviour of the drunk person (whether or not we follow Locke in thinking that that person wasnât really you). By contrast, Madison remembers neither the murder nor (letâs assume) any of the events leading up to it. So in Lockeâs view (suitably amended to take care of the tricky cases) Madison is not now morally responsible, even in a derivative way, for the murder â whether or not we add Lockeâs extra claim that Madison-now is not the same person as the person who committed the murder.
So for Locke, whatever the Supreme Court decides, from a moral point of view Madison isnât guilty of anything.
Lordjayy on July 20th, 2018 at 15:31 UTC »
Damn thats a hard one. Imagine being stuck in prison for the rest of your life not knowing why you're here.
ShrimpShackShooters_ on July 20th, 2018 at 15:01 UTC »
True. But if I commit a crime today, I'm accepting the possibility that I will be punished for it. Even if the punishment's duration lasts longer enough to see me a completely changed person, I've made my decision now to sacrifice the future, whatever it may hold.
Basically, future new self can't be absolved of old self's crimes. Old self made the active decision to ruin it for all possible future selfs.
nihilfit on July 20th, 2018 at 12:45 UTC »
You're right that he's not the same 'person' according to Locke, but he is the same 'man' (again, according to Locke). He also says that we punish the man, not the person; so it doesn't matter that the inmate doesn't remember committing the murder. [Locke defines 'person' as 'a thinking, intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself in different times and places', whereas a 'man' is the physical body]