Do You Guys Think Iko Deserved to be Executed in "Repentance"?

[Shikarnov]

"No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness". (dixit Saint Augustus)
The experience showed me that when a crime(murder) is committed, the victims families believes this is reasonable to expect that the justice of their country does its best to find the perpetrator, judge him/her fairly and punish him/her righteously. In particular, to facilitate their grieving. And when they see that the said perpetrators
switch from killers to victims status and narrowly excaped prison or death because of a mental illness or a procedural error at trial, the families know that they will never mourn and keep moving in their lives so, the justice didn't do its job and they are right to think so. And do not let me on the risk of recurrence!
-> in summary, if the perpetrators has the right to have a good defense, the victims - and by extension the families - should also have the right to see justice done in the name of the deceased.

About the question asked by Lonely Horse, "Do you think Iko deserved to be executed in "Repentance", I agree with Jirin Panthosa, it is a complex philosophical question. But I still think that Iko deserved to be executed because: 1) no matter he had a congenital birth defect, which was the source of his
violent outbursts, he killed a poor man and nothing could change that! 2) he was fairly judged and although he was found guilty the first time, he had a right of appeal, which (here, I refer to the whole procedure) has been more than what the victim had! Alright it failed at the end but at least, this appeal in front of the family of the victim offered him the opportunity to apologize to them and surely allowed to both parties to finally have peace of mind.

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree then. My position stems from the idea that a judicial process should be dispassionate and not based in any way, shape, or from on the desires of victims or their thirst for vengeance. Victims should be witnesses, not more; and certainly not primary beneficiaries of a process that ought be focused on whats best for society as a whole. I also find it hard to accept that a person who has been forced by illness to act against what his or her healthy mind would have decided should be punished. Yes, a crime was committed, but capacity has to be taken into consideration when rendering decisions, otherwise we might as well prosecute everybody as able-minded adults for everything regardless of age or cognitive ability or even intent. And while we're at it, we should throw out any pretense that consent is important in a system that cares only about effect and not at all about cause.

 

[matthunter]

And also this kind of punishment is kinda sorta what Clockwork Orange cautions against.

Not really - in ACO, Alex is not given back the ability (assuming he ever lost it) to empathize with others. He's psychologically programmed against violence. He wants to fight back when his former victims attack him for his crimes, but he can't. Iko is the opposite - he understands why his victims hate him, and would go along with his punishment willingly. The horror here is that you have an individual who most certainly would reform and possibly go on to contribute productively to society, yet his sentence is death rather than a long prison sentence.

The more accurate comparison would be the monk on Babylon 5 who was a mind-wiped and rebuilt serial killer, now a paragon of society, but the families of his victims wanted vengeance and thus had a telepath restore his memories and then kill him (a fate he went to willingly once he knew what he once was).

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I meant that it's conceptually along the lines of rehabilitating someone by trying to manipulate their cognition not to be able to enact violence.

It asserts a philosophy that negates the holy significance of free will, if we consider criminal behavior to be rooted in brain chemistry and not rooted in 'the soul'.

 

[Ghislaine H. B. BRAEME]

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree then. My position stems from the idea that a judicial process should be dispassionate and not based in any way, shape, or from on the desires of victims or their thirst for vengeance. Victims should be witnesses, not more; and certainly not primary beneficiaries of a process that ought be focused on whats best for society as a whole. I also find it hard to accept that a person who has been forced by illness to act against what his or her healthy mind would have decided should be punished. Yes, a crime was committed, but capacity has to be taken into consideration when rendering decisions, otherwise we might as well prosecute everybody as able-minded adults for everything regardless of age or cognitive ability or even intent. And while we're at it, we should throw out any pretense that consent is important in a system that cares only about effect and not at all about cause.

Whether you like it or not, the victim will always hold the central role in a trial (the deceased's family, their lawyer, the reporters from TV and press, rushed to the case and the prosecutor will take care of that) and that's why so few US governors would take the responsability to grace a condemned sentenced to death, even if she/he suffered of a mental illness when she/he took action and the crime was ‎atrocious, for fear of alienating part of the population ..., who is constituents too against her/him and/or seeing some of them decide to dispense justice themselves with the risk of attacking innocent people.

Plus, a question: if a perpetrator wasn't in his right mind when she/he committed the murder, who can affirm that eventually she/he realized that what she/he did was wrong and that she/he won't do it again?

 

[DonIago]

In a murder case in the US at least, the victim's family doesn't officially hold a central role in the trial. They may be witnesses, but the government is responsible for the trial.

Any governor afraid to issue an otherwise reasonable pardon because they might lose votes or are worried that the people would take justice into their own hands (making them as bad as the accused in my book) doesn't deserve to hold office in my opinion.

Should Aamin Marritza have been imprisoned or killed for the crime of doing nothing to help the Bajorans while he worked at Gallitep? Certainly he's at least indirectly guilty of murder on a vast scale at that point.

I'm sure you're aware that beyond trained medical personnel, there's never a guarantee of an individual's mental state. How do you know I'm not capable of killing? How do I know you're not capable of killing? And even if neither of us is capable of doing so right now, perhaps one of us might suffer a blow to the head and become morally compromised and capable of killing in the process.

 

[Jayson1]

In a murder case in the US at least, the victim's family doesn't officially hold a central role in the trial. They may be witnesses, but the government is responsible for the trial.

Any governor afraid to issue an otherwise reasonable pardon because they might lose votes or are worried that the people would take justice into their own hands (making them as bad as the accused in my book) doesn't deserve to hold office in my opinion.

Should Aamin Marritza have been imprisoned or killed for the crime of doing nothing to help the Bajorans while he worked at Gallitep? Certainly he's at least indirectly guilty of murder on a vast scale at that point.

I'm sure you're aware that beyond trained medical personnel, there's never a guarantee of an individual's mental state. How do you know I'm not capable of killing? How do I know you're not capable of killing? And even if neither of us is capable of doing so right now, perhaps one of us might suffer a blow to the head and become morally compromised and capable of killing in the process.

I think any human is capable of killing at anytime. Only difference is most of us have empathy so we can not just logically understand that murder is wrong but feel it as well. If you have a mental illness or condition like Iko and you don't have empathy then how can you really comprehend murder without a emotional and pratical understand of the issue.

It's kind of like how a child might know that murder is wrong but not fully understand why it is wrong which is why people don't judge them by the same standards as adult. I think a mentally ill person like this would almost be like a child in not having a really rounded understanding of right and wrong.

Jason

 

[Voth commando1]

It was a hard situation. The man obviously had neurological issues which were indeed probably the cause of his violent acts yet neurological issue or not he did kill people.

Telling the victims "we're not gonna punish this guy because you see he had some sort of brain issue or lack of neural tissue or whatever and is the cause of his violent actions, and we are going to let him back into society, sorry about your loss." That would be insulting to those who suffered at his hands.

In any case it was also a prime directive issue-the federation would probably have conducted the neural surgery told the victims to let it go(and they probably would) and that would be that. Voyager may have done that but they had no right to pass judgement on that society and its laws.

 

[Refuge]

I believe Iko needed to be judged within the laws and customs of where the crime was committed. It is a sad and often brutal consequence that different jurisdictions even in our own world can enforce severe punishment from one country to the next where it might be a lesser crime and punishment elsewhere. However Iko took life, that is wrong in most cultures.

The complication lies in that he was a different man by the time he met his punishment.. yet the act stood. It really was an ethical consideration for those on Voyager because they were removed from a different law and the origin of the crime. Ultimately it was the family of the victim who had the final say. I was hoping a little that they may have shown mercy but it would be hard not to want .. closure.

 

[Voth commando1]

He did plead their forgiveness in any case. Though I can't imagine they were very inclined to listen.

 

[Refuge]

He did plead their forgiveness in any case. Though I can't imagine they were very inclined to listen.

I remember several years ago there was a tragic story involving two Island communities where one child (teenager) of a family died when another teen had been driving intoxicated. It was part of the culture to bring both families together in their shared grief.. It was humbling because the forgiveness was genuine.

 

[captainkirk]

Prison is supposed to serve multiple purposes, beyond punishment and discouraging future crime. It's also supposed to rehabilitate criminals to become useful to society again. It's been several years since I watched the episode so I can't remember all the details, but surely in a case like this the best course of action would be to place Iko under psychiatric observation for several years to make sure his violent tendencies were truly gone, and then place him back into society in a position where it would be difficult to cause serious harm to anyone?

People often give Voyager a hard time, saying that it's nothing but a bunch of technobabble, but to me episodes like this one, along with Tuvix and Nothing Human show how capable it was of telling thought-provoking stories. In each of them there's no clear-cut right or wrong decision.