You're the governor of a state that's about to execute a murderer who also happens to be a brilliant surgeon. On the eve of the execution you receive a letter from an ill citizen who needs some expensive surgery that he can't afford, but that falls within the specialty of your condemned prisoner. The citizen says that the prisoner has agreed to perform the surgery for free before his execution, but that he'll need access to surgical facilities and a week or so to prepare. Do you postpone the execution and allow the surgery?
If you decide to postpone the execution, how do you deal with the unending stream of pleas for free surgery that follows the first? The condemned man is eager to stay alive, and is willing and able to continue performing surgeries. How do you deal with other prisoners on death row who don't have such highly-demanded skills but are willing to do any kind of work that will allow them to postpone their own executions? How do you deal with the families of the victims who become enraged by the postponement of justice?
If you decide to go ahead with the execution, do you help the letter-writing citizen or ignore him? If you help him, how do you deal with the flood of letters that follow? What do you say to dying people who might have lived if they had had access to the indentured surgeon?
This hypothetical somehow seems significantly similar to the question of whether it is ethically acceptable to utilize the results of Nazi medical research involving brutal, lethal experiments on Jewish prisoners...
The Surgeon fries, no questions asked, and I would still be able to sleep at night.
DD: Oh heck yeah, I totally agree. The complicated part of the issue is how you, as Governor, would characterize the situation and your decision in a way such that your fool political opponents wouldn't be able to demonize you, etc. Assuming you're interested in re-election.
Keep the surgeon alive as long as he keeps doing good work for free, and as long as the recipients of his services are not inmates or convicted felons with long rap sheets themselves. Kill everybody else. Justice would dictate killing all of them, but some things are more important than justice. This guy's worth having as a slave, the rest of them aren't.
Nicholas: Well, if a Republican was governor in this situation, he/she would be demonized by the Left no matter what the decision and the basis for said decision. Take Bill Frist and that whole issue. He's getting the shaft and it's coming out that there were tons of people including Nancy Pelosi who were taking midnight flights on none other than Communist China's dime. But Frist will be the scapegoat for this one because he's a Republican.
If a Democrat was governor in this situation, the murderer would probably go free and get a license to practice pediatrics. The governor would give convoluted and nebulous speeches and whip crowds into sweaty furors, all the while not really saying anything substantial. Think Dean. It blows through with a fury and no one can remember what the heck happened.
Doesn't the main crux of the argument fall within the statement, "falls within the specialty of your condemned prisoner"? I assume this means he's not the ONLY one who can perform the surgery, just htat he's the only one who can or will perform it for free.
If he was the only one in the world capable of that type of surgery, maybe it'd be different. But seems here it's just an matter of economics, and the price of the surgeon's stay of execution = the price of the surgery.
Using prisoners as slaves devalues the work of innocent free men. Who pays for that?? Why should other surgeons loose work to convicts? In a crazy scenario, a motivated surgeon who wanted to work but couldn't make it economic (because of the disasterous effects on the economy of this policy?) might get himself in jail deliberately to work from there. So mostly I'd go with the execution (that's if I didn't object to capital punishment, which I do).
It's different when your prisoner has a unique or sufficiently rare skill which cannot be replaced. Then slaving him (just for that skill) will not impact the economy.
I think Barry nailed it. It's not really about saving a life, it's about saving a life on the cheap. It's a trade-off between justice and economics. And as far as that goes, it's not clear how much the overall society benefits from leaving him alive. He's only working for free if you discount the cost of keeping him confined. And although it varies on a case-by-case basis, in general there is an additional cost in the risks you assume in putting a murderer in a position where he can take another life.
In general, I would favor allowing (or forcing) prisoners to do productive work, but not at the expense of not receiving their entire sentence.
I think we are so distracted by the pathos of the poor patient that we tend to forget that this doctor was convicted of something so heinous that he's been sentenced to death. This guy was not only found guilty of (probably) murder, but of murder so gross that he's being "sent to the office" to go have a discussion with his Maker about it immediately. He's probably a scheming, conniving, anti-social individual. Would *you* give a scalpel to a guy who'd already proven himself capable of murder? If he offered to operate on me to save my life, I'd tell him I'd see him on the other side.