Thursday, October 9, 2014

Duty Trial Scenario

So I had this scenario that I wanted to use as a question for everyone to resolve, since I think either of our current moral and ethical systems would differentiate on the answers and likely have a hard time coming to anything entirely conclusive. But let's get on with it!

There are three people on trial in this scenario, and you are a juror. Being a juror, you have to decide to give a guilty or an innocent verdict, and you can say guilty or innocent to any individual in the case. So while person 1 might be guilty for some reason, that doesn't mean the 2nd one would be guilty, too.
The three people are 1) a Commander, 2) a General, and 3) a Soldier.
(1) The Commander is trying to save the lives of innocent citizens by getting information. This information will definitely save lives, but is inconclusive as to how many. He thus orders the General to get this information, and that the sooner the better, because potentially it could save more lives the sooner the Commander has it. The Commander is disconnected from the War (for the scenario's sake, let's say there is some kind of conflict going on between them and a neighboring country), because he is far away from the actual battles being fought.
(2) The General is under orders by the Commander to get information ASAP (as soon as possible), and that the sooner he has it, more lives will be saved. Thus, he concludes that the information takes priority, and orders Soldiers to get it by any means necessary, and again, ASAP. The General is not disconnected from the war, and has a lot of tactical issues on hand to deal with. Orders from the Commander take priority over those that he/she gives out, and thus are more importantly automatically. The General also told the Soldier from whom the information could best be attained, which was known to be a civilian area without a great deal of military resistance. He gives the Soldier in this scenario no specifics as to whom the information should be obtained from, but does order that this is the area that should be (tactically speaking) the best place to gather it from.
(3) The Soldier in this scenario has seen direct combat with enemy troops, and was under orders to gather information. The Soldier willingly tortured and killed several individuals to get the information, which was successfully relayed to the Commander, who is confirmed to have gotten it. The Soldier shows no overtly psychopathic tendencies, and holds a record (comparatively) clean of insubordination.

Here are a few things we can't know:
The information may or may not have been successfully implemented.
Those killed could have been military or civilians (about a 50% / 50% chance).
The number of lives taken to acquire the information is unknown, but definitely more than one.
The punishment put forth by the judge could be anything between prison or an execution sentence.

Clearly in this scenario, it would be impossible to calculate anything with any real concrete yes or no answers, but these people are either 100% innocent or 100% guilty individually. Being military, they are simply doing their duty, but does duty alone exempt them from the basic ethical rule of murder being wrong? How would you choose to justify violence? 
Are all of these people guilty, innocent, or some mixture of the two possibilities?

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