Order of the Stick 596!

[hamishspence]

Justification turns Murder into Not Murder? Really?

Depends on the justification. Cop in a non-death penalty state arrests murderer. Who points out that law will treat him as insane (it was a very spectacular murder and cop found bloodied, unarmed murderer standing over body LAUGHING! !

Cop make unilateral decision to kill the handcuffed murderer. Justification: life imprisonment is not enough, evil, threat to society and very good at faking insanity.

Justification would not, typically, convert Murder to Not-murder.

Now, in Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy, agent is aware he has legal right to kill in self defense. He kicks over chair, murderer looks up and snatches up knife: bang bang bang.

(entry was legal by fact of suspected wrongdoing and fact agent heard screams from house. Ironically, it wasn't victim screaming)

Here we see a more valid justification.

 

[Cadfan]

Really, Elan nails it pretty well in the end. If it wasn't a good act, why wouldn't you tell the paladins about it? I mean, if it was a good act, then the paladins should be right on board.

Paladins are lawful good.

We've just seen... how many strips in which the paladin's penchant for lawfulness screws up the world? And the only person who could even keep the remotely in check was a chaotic good old man pretending to be insane?

 

[Storm Raven]

Really, Elan nails it pretty well in the end. If it wasn't a good act, why wouldn't you tell the paladins about it? I mean, if it was a good act, then the paladins should be right on board.

An act can be a non-evil act, and yet not a good act. An act can be a good act, and yet not a lawful good act. An act can be a lawful good act, and yet not up to the standards of an order of paladins.

 

[Hussar]

But, a non-evil act would be perfectly acceptable to paladins, Storm Raven. They have no problems with you performing neutral acts. If this was a neutral or good act, then why would you have to lie about it to them?

Same goes with Cadfan. The fact that the rightful ruler of the land is a few steps away means that "frontier justice" is pretty much pointless. Sure, the bad guy brags that he can get away with it, but, that doesn't mean he's right.

Heck, Mr McEvil has Non-detection. Ok. V whacks him with dispel magics until he detects as evil (you do have a boat full of paladins after all) and then perform the trial. Poof, Mr Mc Evil gets to hang all nice and lawful.

But, V isn't interested in that. He bypasses everything, pulls the trigger and murders the prisoner.

I'm not saying V is evil. I am saying that he just committed an evil act. Good grief, does he need to eat puppies too? Permanently killing a prisoner is an evil act. Full stop. You cannot justify it at all. Not when the rightful ruler of the land is ten steps away, and there are perfectly reasonable ways of conducting a fair trial.

 

[Cadfan]

1. These paladins have demonstrated a very extensive history of confusing "lawful" and "good," even when the fate of reality itself was at stake.

2. The prisoner himself just explained, in detail, that being imprisoned didn't actually affect him, and that the lawful legal processes were likely to lead to greater injustice.

3. And V has additional knowledge to the effect that K's ongoing attempts at treason are likely to jeopardize all of existence.

The only place I really get off the train with V's reasoning is the part where he concludes that anyone Elan has captured must be the main villain. I'm not sure how much metagame knowledge can factor in to our evaluation of his acts. On one hand, its something the characters display frequently. On the other, its sort of unmeasurable. So I've kind of bracketed that matter.

But in terms of killing Kubuta in a general sense? Killing a prisoner isn't bad "just because," its bad for specific reasons. If or when those reasons don't apply, then killing a prisoner isn't necessarily bad. If Kubuta had been explaining that, thanks to the irreversible process of a potion he just consumed, in five rounds he was going to turn into a massive demon and devour all of them, would we even be having this conversation?

 

[Hussar]

If if's and but's were donuts we'd all be fat as well. Why bring in nonsensical hypotheticals to try to prove your point? Why not deal with the facts at hand?

Fact: V had no idea why Elan took a prisoner, nor does he know who the prisoner is.

Fact: V has no authority here to execute said prisoner when the rightful ruler of the land is ten steps away.

Fact: V kills the prisoner for no other reason than expedience. His whole justification for killing the prisoner is because it would slow him down.

Fact: Elan recognizes the act as evil and says as such.

Fact: A non-evil act would not be seen as a problem by the paladins. Nor are all paladins "lawful stupid" as has been shown repeatedly in the strip.

Killing a prisoner isn't just bad "just because". It's always bad. Full stop. It's always, 100% evil to kill a prisoner. ((Note, execute is a different story. Had they been out in the wilderness, or had there been no reasonable way to bring the baddie to justice, I'd be right with you.))

See, point 3 is irrelavent. V had absolutely no idea who the prisoner was. "additional knowledge" doesn't enter into it. Point 2 is also irrelavent since V has no knowledge of that. He isn't killing the prisoner because the prisoner bragged that he'd get away with it. He doesn't know and furthermore doesn't care. Point 1 is possible, but, "I killed him because it would be inconvenient for me to bring him to justice" is still an evil act.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm with Hussar. It was an evil act.

Just because you think someone will get away with a crime does not give you the right to kill that person, in the real world or in a game world.

it is not lawful stupid not to go around killing someone that is a prisoner. You may think he'll get off, or escape, or whatever, but that doesn't make it right for you to kill the person.

Either way, loved the end of the strip....

 

[Cadfan]

Well, first, I'm not saying the paladins are lawful stupid. I'm saying that they clearly take rules very, very seriously, and tend to believe that "good" and "lawful" are the same thing. That's not necessarily lawful stupid, its just lawful good. As such, they are likely to have objections to chaotic good acts, particularly when those chaotic good acts infringe on their own business- like Kubuta's feud with Azure City.

Second, I disagree with your fundamental moral principles. I think its impossible to just declare that killing a prisoner is always wrong- I think you have to instead analyze what it is about a prisoner that makes killing them always wrong. And once you've done that, sometimes you get a more nuanced view on whether its wrong to kill a prisoner.

In my opinion, the reason its wrong to kill a prisoner is because they tend to be incapable of harming you, and there are non lethal alternatives available for controlling them.

Kubuta clearly did not believe that these traits applied to him.

 

[Delta]

If the mustache was good enough for V, then the veiny-crinkly-messed-up face is good enough for me. He's evil.

 

[Storm Raven]

Heck, Mr McEvil has Non-detection. Ok. V whacks him with dispel magics until he detects as evil (you do have a boat full of paladins after all) and then perform the trial. Poof, Mr Mc Evil gets to hang all nice and lawful.

Lawful is the operative word here. Killing the prisoner wasn't lawful, that doesn't make it evil.

I'm not saying V is evil. I am saying that he just committed an evil act. Good grief, does he need to eat puppies too? Permanently killing a prisoner is an evil act. Full stop. You cannot justify it at all.

Sure you can. Easily in fact.

Not when the rightful ruler of the land is ten steps away, and there are perfectly reasonable ways of conducting a fair trial.

The only reason to have a fair trial is to determine the guilt of the accused and determine sentence. Full stop. A trial isn't in and of itself a good-aligned thing - it is merely a means to an end. V determined using metagame logic that Kubota was guilty of capital crimes and avoided the therefore unnecessary trial by executing sentence immediately.

Taking a prisoner to "legitimate authority" and having a "fair trial" isn't a good goal in and of itself. It might be considered a lawful goal, but it is neither good nor evil. The goal is to determine the guilt of the accused, but V didn't need to do that here, since he has enough evidence to act upon already. A trial would have simply been redundant.