Execute Sled's murderers

John Mamoun says relative societal worth should count when punishing criminals. John Mamoun says relative societal worth should count when punishing criminals. Like many people, I was shocked by the murder of Penn researcher Vladimir Sled on Halloween night. He was, by all accounts, a nice guy, and the scum and garbage who ganged up on him as he tried to prevent them from stealing his fiance's purse were not nice by any standards. Sled was a biochemist with a doctorate, doing us a favor by sacrificing his career to relatively anti-social scientific research. On the other hand, men who knifed him with the same senseless resolve of a mob performing a lynching, probably did not count Ph.D.-holders or even high school graduates among their numbers. So, when Sled's attackers are brought to justice, should the justice system take into account Sled's greater value to society, compared to his executioners? Should Sled's greater value as a human being mean that a more severe penalty -- such as a hasty state execution -- be meted out to his executioners, to make up the disparity in personal value between victim and slayers? I believe the answer to these questions is yes. And on the basis of my logic, all the individuals involved in Sled's murder -- even mere peripheral accomplices -- should be executed. It appears that only the educated members of American society prevent this country from degenerating into an anarchic mess. In addition, only the educated members are capable of solving pressing societal problems such as disease, political instability and technological stagnation. The problem is that, statistically, every time a high-quality human being like Sled dies, the human race's ability to keep from destroying itself diminishes. This is true for two reasons. First, Sled's death leaves one less human capable of anchoring humanity's morality and encouraging technological progress. Second, Sled's education was surely not cheap, economically or psychologically, for him and for those who taught him. Now, he can never repay his own or his teachers' investment of dollars and time, nor will society as a whole benefit from any breakthroughs in disease therapy his later research might have generated. Sled's death was a double-pronged penalty for all of us. We are not only hurt psychologically but materially by his murder -- so our best chance for justice is to execute all who contributed to his death. There is another issue that should be considered here. What if a high-quality human being destroys another high-quality human being? How would this type of crime change the distribution of justice against the murderer? This is a difficult question, requiring for a just decision a careful analysis of the circumstances of the murder, the relative societal position of each individual involved and the aggregate value of all individuals to society. Here, Sled's aggregate value was very high, while that of his attackers was very low. This is the mathematical justification for "extreme" penalties like death.