The Telltale Heart on Trial

         

Parish          5

Evan Parish
24 November 2015

The Telltale Heart on Trial

Guilt. A word with that defines whether we send a human being to death row. A word that divides into us and them. It is societyâs final judgment on whether a person belongs. Few distinctions are so crucial, yet so murky. In this paper, we will explore some of the many complexities of defining guilt, some landmark examples of ambiguity, before finally delivering a verdict on what should be distinguished as âguiltyâ.
Guilt comes from judgment. Judgment, of course, is a deeply ingrained human instinct. The idea that we must use some sort of logic to determine whether to hunt and travel with another of our kind, or stone them to death. Morality can be said to be the science of gut-feeling judgments of others. Our sense of morality neatly divides all of humanity into guilty and innocent, us and them. Of course, like all instinctive judgments, our morality is relative to our frame of reference - to the point that we have spent essentially all of human history bickering on the subject. In the interest of clarity, governments and philosophies and religions were established to precisely dictate whether to hang, stone, honor someone or burn them at the stake according to their nominal guilt. Suffice to say that our natural judgment of other humans is the basis for our science of law, government, and ethics. Inevitably, however, our own personal judgment will come into conflict with existent laws and customs, contributing to a noisy dialogue that has been raging for centuries. As such, it is important to distinguish between moral and lawful guilt.
Still, though, we are faced with a problem of defining guilt. The common-sense simpleton approach is to look for the man with the smoking gun, which accurately sums up a surprisingly long period of criminal justice. The preference of many early courts tended to be on the side of guilt, such that the notion of âinnocent until proven guiltyâ was quite a radical idea at one time. In any case, criminal justice in any era is, more or less, founded on the premise that a crime is the product of a guilty party or individual. By examining a crime, we essentially try to piece together the âcausal chainâ of events (Johnson) leading up to a heinous murder or a stolen baguette, in order to find the point at which a decision was made by an individual that was the direct antecedent of the crime, so we can find the bloody (or buttery) hands of the perpetrator. Of course, this is extremely complex and multifaceted and requires a law degree, a courtroom, hard evidence and rather unflattering black robes. For simplicityâs sake, let us examine a popular piece of right-wing propaganda, âguns donât kill people, people doâ. As voiced in Psychology Today, there is no stated conclusion to this argument, but, of course, it is reasonable to say that a piece of machined metal is not the ultimate agent in a crime. Something like a gun is a âproximate causeâ when employed in a crime; a part of the causal chain after the initial criminal act. Ironically, though the single premise is true, it has absolutely nothing to do with gun control (Johnson). Regardless, we can see that proximate causes like a handgun or a strategically placed banana peel aid the commission of a crime, but certainly do not bear the guilt and thus generally do not find their way into a prison cell.
Similarly, we must determine which causes are too early on the causal chain to have been the actions of knowing individuals. Take, for example, social media. A quick stroll through the dark alleyways of the internet will provide any prospective jihadi or Satanist with all the justification they could ever desire to commit the kind of crimes to make the rest of us vomit internally. If a Tumblr post is determined to have contributed to the decision of an individual to commit a crime, should we not hold the author of said post partly accountable? Our precedent of free speech says otherwise; simply, words are not actions. In reality, however, the lines are not so clearly defined: take the example of Massachusetts teen Michelle Carter, who persuaded her boyfriend to commit suicide through a harrowing series of text messages. Conrad Roy, the victim, had long been suicidal but was unsuccessful, before overcoming his hesitation with the help of Carter. âYou have to just do itâ, she texted him shortly before his death. Carter has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of Roy (Murdock). The idea of someone deliberately pressuring a purported loved one to kill him- or herself is very disturbing to any rational person, but we should not be so quick to convict. While Carterâs actions were outrageous and while she is undeniably morally guilty, we cannot necessarily ascribe criminal guilt on these grounds. As disgusting and destructive as they undoubtedly were, Carterâs messages did not commit the crime, but rather, tragically, Roy did choose to take his own life. And while few would probably complain if Carter were to be convicted, this would be against legal precedent and principle. In short, we cannot reasonably place guilt on causes too early in the causal chain to be the direct actions of a knowing perpetrator.
This distinction, however, tends to be abused in many cases. Take the example of Ethan Couch, a sixteen-year-old Texan that stole several cases of beer from a Wal-Mart and killed four pedestrians in a drunk-driving car accident. A psychologist by the name of G. Dick Miller diagnosed the teen with a mental illness he termed âaffluenzaâ, due to the teenâs coddled lifestyle â purportedly leading to his inability to understand the consequences of his actions. In one of the most shocking losses for the American people in recent judicial history, he got off with 10 years of probation and a stay in a rehab center (Hayes). Obviously, this argument is egregiously absurd in several ways. First, if we take that the teen truly did not understand the import of his actions, then a stay in rehabilitation will actually promote more of the same. Secondly, his parents were directly responsible for bringing about this so-called âaffluenzaâ , and yet were not penalized in any way. Third, this is not the first time that the justice system had failed to appropriately deal with the family, as the teen and his parents had had run-ins with the law before (Hayes). Instead of logically placing the criminal guilt on the offender or his negligent parents, a phantom illness was charged, leaving the public to pay the price. The âAffluenzaâ case is a prime example of a creative misunderstanding of criminal guilt, where the charges were deflected to an indirect antecedent.
While, as shown, guilt can be ambiguous to ascribe - with countless influencing factors and succeeding proximate causes - we, as a society, must make these distinctions. In view of the given examples, as well countless others, I would advocate that we return to our traditional view of guilt: that a given crime is the direct result of a decision or an action made by a âguiltyâ individual or group. While it may seem attractive to disperse the guilt to innumerable other factors, at the end of the day we must imprison or otherwise punish certain members of our society to ensure safety for the greater majority. I believe in the human power to triumph over sin; to make rational decisions that we may be held accountable for, even in light of compelling incidents. Responsibility, and guilt, lies with the intentional perpetrator â who made a decision that forced a certain state of events as the direct result. Now, we just need to figure out exactly who that is.

Works Cited

Hayes, Ashley. ââAffluenzaâ: Is It Real?â. CNN. Cable News Network, 13 Dec. 2013. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.
Johnson, David. âGuns Donât Kill People, People Do?â. Psychology Today. Psychology Today, 12 Feb. 2013. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.
Murdock, Sebastian. ââIt's Now Or Never,' Texted Teen Charged In Boyfriend's Suicideâ.
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 26 Aug. 2015. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.