impure_tale

A recent matter appears to have spurred some discussion, and considering my involvement, I suppose that since one person has already apparently made his views quite public, it is only fair that I do the same, only conversely I will have the backbone to make it so that he can view and respond to my remarks.

To keep it brief I will spare you my usual style for something a little more stilted.

Some nights ago, my item warned me of my Inmate being in danger, and naturally I armed myself and went seeking him first in his cabin, which is where I found him, along with Captain Swing, who had bound and was presently torturing him, using a sharpened implement of some crude form to cut him open in multiple places. There was so much blood I could smell it upon entering the room. I spoke, alerting the culprit of my presence, and when I saw the whites of his eyes, I shot him.

I do not deny my doing so. I would also say that I do not apologize, but I do, quite humbly, to his Warden, because he is charged with Swing's protection and discipline, and by what laws the Wardens like to collectively hold one another to, I have therefore overstepped my bounds in defense of my own Inmate.

I did not find out about an incident between the two after the fact and seek Swing out to retaliate. I did not follow a lead built up on rumor and speculation and move to correct it. I did not attack an innocent. My Inmate was being flayed alive, and I acted. This is not a choice that I take lightly -- I have not killed a man since I was younger than all but a few of you on this ship, when I served my country in times of war. And as I intimated to Professor Snape in private conversation, if I were to have found an enemy combatant in the tent of a soldier for whom I was responsible, doing the same as Captain Swing was doing, I would have still done what I did a few nights ago.

I will conclude by re-iterating this: The well-being of my Inmate, and his continued progress, is of the utmost importance to me, and I intend to continue to protect him aggressively. That is fair warning to anyone who might intend to harm him, because for some of you it takes knowing that much to convince you to use common sense and forgo violence. That is not to say that every slight against him earns a pistol shot. If he has attacked you, then inform me, and I will punish him. If you defend yourself against his attack, he will be punished. No one here can claim I spoil my Inmate. I do not.

Torture, however, is not a defensive measure. If I had caught anyone in Swing's position that night, they would be recovering from death toll right now.

All of this having been said, I submit myself to whatever measures the other Wardens see fit to level against me, though I maintain that the Doctor really is the only one with the right to state what those should be.

[Private to Iago]

...I do not know how you are recovering, but I shall come in to check on you soon. I am concerned, however, that the other Wardens may attempt to re-sort you over this. I will do my best to see to it this does not happen, but I apologize, Iago, if my rash decision comes to harm you further.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I have to ask, what would you have done in his situation?

I'll readily admit that in the same situation, I would have shot any person trying to harm my Inmate and while I also admit that the worst I would have done is stun the bastard, the Marquis can hardly claim to have the same option available to him. There's not the resources to produce phasers for every Warden here. He believes that he was working with what he had to his advantage, from what I gather.

I don't think that killing is the first option in any situation, you're right but it sounds like to me that he let the situation get the better of him and he reacted accordingly. And it sounds like a product of his time.

I'm with the good captain on this one. Would've killed the nutter too, like the Marquis said, even if the inmate wasn't my own.

I don't have a gun or a phaser, so neither are an option for me. I would have restrained him by force, and a proportionate amount of it. I would have handcuffed him and used the resources I had at my disposal, and the training I've had - which promotes the dealing with the high majority of situations without the need for recourse to any kind of arms, only restraint.

If I was armed, and was not strong enough to restrain him using the training I've had, I would have threatened him with a weapon. If there was any cause to use violence, I would have shot him non-fatally.

Murder is not justified, and we have to be rational enough not to let the situation get the better of us, no matter how angry or upset we are. We have to act sensibly, and not simply with our gut reactions.

I want to know how I am supposed to tell my inmate that murder is wrong, unless in situations where you have no other option to defend yourself, when we allow this? It's contradictory.

I think in a place where people bounce back to life either on their own, or by someone else's request, the very idea of murder and death itself becomes a mockery of what it means. That's not an excuse to kill. And it makes it rather hard to impress the impact of death to anyone in that case.

The fact that people come back could have factored into his decision. I don't know, I'm not in his head but he has been here for a very long while.

Edited 2010-03-26 00:27 (UTC)

No, it means that we can only impress the impact of death and murder on people is by giving it weight and meaning as an act. It only has as much meaning as we give it - and we have to give it the moral weight of wanting someone dead.

Wanting someone to die, and acting upon it, is not morally acceptable in any circumstance, no matter how temporary the suffering, it is still immoral. It is still the act of taking someone's life. As I said to someone yesterday, if you start treating something as less of a crime because the damage is temporary, then why bother having greivous bodily harm as a crime in the real world. The damage goes away, after all... That's not the point. The point is that he took the action to kill someone, and that's not made suddenly acceptable or alright by the fact Swing came back to life.

Fair enough.

I'm not condoning murder. But I can't berate the Marquis for something that I feel like I would have done as well. You could argue that stunning someone is a form of shooting them, since sometimes a mark is left and if you believe Paddy, they give you a heart condition after a while. He was defending his Inmate, probably letting his emotions get the better of him, and he admitted that killing is not something he's done in a very long time, which to me says that he felt that it was one of the few options, if not the only option available to him. It's not a great option, no, but it did stop the torture in defense of another person. You can't ignore that.

What punishment would you level against him, out of curiosity?

I'm not saying he took the decision lightly, I'm saying that he made the decision to kill him when I'm fairly sure he had a lot of other options avaliable to him. Whether Swing is telling the truth in saying he'd have stopped if warned is a different matter, but he was never given the chance to prove either way. The immediate decision he came to was that to kill over that of taking a different action - in my mind, that was an immoral choice. He might not have felt he had another option, but he did. He always did.

I know he stopped torture, and I'm not saying that wasn't necessary, I'm saying the way he went about it was disproportionate.

I don't know, exactly. I think the Marquis is right, the Doctor should have some say in the matter, but I don't think it's my position alone to make these kind of decisions. In my opinion, I wouldn't let him keep the gun, for one. and I would expect him to at least apologise to Swing. Anything after that, I think would have to be dealt with, bearing in mind it was in aid of protecting his inmate, which doesn't make it right, but puts it in context, and bearing in mind what punishment we would give an inmate who had done something similar. I don't think, though, it means he doesn't deserve to be a warden, it's not as drastic as that, as it was far from a cold blooded murder, but it still was killing.

I have to point out that the Marquis is not a young man. He's recently had a heart attack. He's not as capable of overpowering something as I am, or as you are. It could very well have been the only option at his disposal to stop the situation.

The gun might be his only means of self defense and I would never take that away from someone. Though I have no problem with asking him to apologize.

I am aware of this, but even if you are using a gun as the first line of self defence, you don't shoot to kill. You just don't. That is not the only option you have avaliable, even when your only method of defending yourself might be a gun. That's, equally, my point.

That's a fair point. But I still don't think we should take away his only form of self defense. Perhaps just better educate him about it.

It was merely a suggestion, not a demand. I think anything of that nature should be discussed at greater length, and I can't say I have a strong opinion, I just didn't want it to be left alone as an issue.

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a warden filter - he's defending his former Inmate d'aww

a warden filter - threadhoppin your faces

a warden filter -

a warden filter - also he's biased a tiny bit cause Swing is a douche

a warden filter - well, he did try and torture you too...

a warden filter - see. douche

a warden filter - howie doesn't like him either.

a warden filter - good. he doesn't deserve friends

Re: a warden filter - good. he doesn't deserve friends

a warden filter

Re: a warden filter