Knowing Harm When We See It

One of the themes I keep visiting here at Windypundit is that when you harm someone, the magnitude of the harm you do that person is not dependent on your reason for doing it. Punch a guy in the face, and it doesn’t matter if he’s an innocent stranger on the bus or a push-in robber trying to get into your home. You cause the same pain either way.

I’m not saying there’s no difference. Punching a stranger for no reason is assault and battery, but punching a home invader is self-defense, which is usually considered justified. But the difference is not that striking a home invader does less harm but that self-defense produces a benefit — defense of the innocent – which we as a society consider to be worth the cost of the harm.

But the punch still hurts.

Jeff Gamso gets this. When discussing state executions of convicted criminals in capital cases, he calls them murders. I suppose that’s wrong as a matter of law (although statutes are sometimes sloppy about these things, so he may have a good argument), but calling it “murder” is his way of emphasizing that the state is doing a terrible thing. To the person being killed, it doesn’t matter that a judge has approved of the killing. It’s no different than being gunned down in the street.

Proponents of capital punishment may well argue that it brings benefits that are worth the cost. However, if they try to downplay the cost by arguing that the condemned person does not deserve to live, then they are trying to cheat: There’s almost no harm you can’t justify if you are allowed to discount the humanity of the victim. An argument for capital punishment must show benefits that offset and therefore justify the killing of a human being. The terrible killing must, at the very least, prevent something even worse.

Ken White gets it too, when discussing the case of David Eckert, who was picked up by cops in New Mexico last January and accused of transporting drugs in his rectum. The cops then took him to some doctors who repeatedly forced their fingers into his anus, gave him several enemas, and eventually sedated him so they could perform a colonoscopy. They did all this to Eckert without his permission and over his objections.

Ken discusses this incident in a post titled, “What Is The Quantum of Proof Necessary for Police to Rape and Torture you in New Mexico?” Given the details of what happened, I applaud his use of the terms “rape” and “torture.” If the accounts and information given Ken White, Scott Greenfield, Chris Ramirez of KOB news, and of course David Eckert and his lawyer are all true, then there is little doubt in my mind that

• Doctors Robert Wilcox and Okay Odocha essentially raped and tortured David Eckert.
• The Gila Regional Medical Center provided the location and equipment for the rape and torture of David Eckert.
• The City of Deming and Police Officers Bobby Orosco, Robert Chavez, and Officer Hernandez may have abetted the rape and torture of David Eckert.
• Hidalgo County and Deputies David Arredondo, Robert Rodriguez, and Patrick Green may have abetted the rape and torture of David Eckert.
• Deputy District Attorney Daniel Dougherty wrote the warrant that led to the rape and torture of David Eckert.
• 6th District Judge Daniel Viramontes signed the warrant that led to the rape and torture of David Eckert.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned whether police found the drugs they were looking for. That’s because whether or not they found the drugs doesn’t change the terrible things they did. In point of fact, they didn’t find any drugs, but even if they had, I don’t see how it could be worth the harm they caused.

I wish that when legislators were considering passing new criminal laws, they would stop to think about how those laws will be enforced, and the harm that is inherent in that enforcement. As Molly Crabapple says,

Arrest is always violent. The NYPD may or may not break your ribs, but the process of arrest in America is still a man tying your hands behind your back at gunpoint and locking you in a cage. Holding cells are shit-encrusted boxes, often too crowded to sit down. Police can leave you there for three days; long enough to lose your job. If this seems obvious, I say it because the polite middle classes trivialize arrest. They talk about “keeping people off the streets.” They don’t realize that the constant threat of arrest is traumatic, unless it happens to them or their kids.

Legislators should keep in mind that every arrest is a violent act. Every SWAT raid is a home invasion. Every stop-and-frisk is someone fondling your body against your will. Every interrogation is a stranger asking impertinent questions. Every imprisonment is a kidnapping and every execution is a murder.

I don’t see how you can justify any of that for consensual crimes, since any true harm could be eliminated by withholding consent. And even when the goal is to stop criminals from doing real harm to other people, state-sanctioned harm can only be justified if it is reasonable in proportion to the harm and reasonably likely to actually prevent that harm.