On Explaining and Justifying Criminal Action

Tibor Machan recently weighed in on the Ron Paul-Rudy Giuliani controversy, first, in Ron Paul on “Blowback”; second, replying to Pat Buchanan’s subsequent defense of Paul, in Buchanan on Ron Paul’s Debate Point.

As Buchanan pointed out, “When Ron Paul said the 9/11 killers were “over here because we are over there,” he was not excusing the mass murderers of 3,000 Americans. He was explaining the roots of hatred out of which the suicide-killers came.” Machan, however, maintained (in his second article):

if someone states what Ron Paul stated about bin Laden and his gang, namely, that “They attack us because we’ve been over there, we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years,” this must mean, like it or not, that bin Laden and his gang acted as they did on 9/11 because “we have been over there.” And that means our having been over there must be seen as a justification for their actions, the reason they believed it right for them to launch the 9/11 attack.

Machan’s comments apparently upset various libertarians who are anti-war and Paul supporters; see, e.g., the debate here.

In response, Machan posted a third piece, Must We Mean What We Say?, in which he tries to clarify. He concludes:

Saying that they attacked us because we’ve been over there means that is why they attacked us and leaves a great deal that needed to be said unsaid. But I was myself wrong to suggest that this amounted to saying bin Laden & Co. were justified in perpetrating 9/11.

So, Machan appears to semi-retract or at least clarify. In the same article, however, he seems to maintain some of his earlier reasoning:

Now it is true enough that many times when people explain the conduct of others, they do not mean to justify this conduct. However, it is also true that whenever one does offer an explanation of another’s conduct, conduct that is normally blameworthy, there is the implication that the person involved isn’t really culpable—it is the factors that explain what he or she did that caused what ensued. In other words, in offering an explanation one is pretty much suggesting that the person is not responsible and even allows that inference that the action may have been justified (or made sense).

Consider that in a criminal trial if a psychologist or psychiatrists can explain someone’s unlawful conduct, this most often is done so as to exculpate the accused. “He killed his wife because he was insane” or “He rammed the car because the sun blinded him and he couldn’t see.” These do amount to explanations which are offered to as to eliminate or at least reduce guilt.

It does not seem correct to me that whenever one offers an explanation of conduct that is “normally blameworthy,” that one is seeking to excuse it. If we seek to understand why someone commits an act of murder–this is commonly done by prosecutors and police in seeking “motive” to get a true picture of why and how the crime occurred–this does not justify, excuse, or condone it.

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10:22 am on May 21, 2007