
Singapore Just Sentenced a Drug Trafficker to Death via Zoom - doppp
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bv8xvz/singapore-just-sentenced-a-drug-trafficker-to-death-via-zoom
======
parsimo2010
I gotta be honest, delivering a sentence over Zoom isn’t an issue for me.
Amnesty International is right (IMHO) in arguing that a death sentence for a
drug offense is extreme, but let’s not pretend that the judge being in a
different room somehow changes the nature of the sentence. It’s not like the
judge put on a clown costume or told jokes during the sentencing.

 _Maybe_ there is an argument that a trial conducted remotely loses some human
emotion and makes a court more likely to find someone guilty of a crime, but
the act of delivering a sentence after all that could just as easily be done
via a letter in the post.

~~~
happytoexplain
I agree with you. However:

>Maybe there is an argument that a trial conducted remotely loses some human
emotion

This argument not only exists, it is entirely why we face a jury of our peers
in person. Otherwise, there would be no reason not to avoid the more obvious
problem of negative bias by hiding the defendant entirely (justice is supposed
to be blind, after all).

~~~
parsimo2010
While that's similar, the distinction here is that conducting a trial over
Zoom doesn't hide the defendant; you can still see them. Zoom is admittedly
lower fidelity, but does it actually matter? Zoom certainly degrades the
experience when timing matters, such as telling a joke. But with testimony and
legal arguments, timing isn't as important (as long as people aren't talking
over each other). Also, with Zoom you could dedicate an portion of your screen
to watching the defendant; in person you would have to move your gaze around
the room, with Zoom you could see a defendant react to a witness' testimony
without looking away from either of them.

So the question remains whether the net effect of Zoom's differences changes
the court in a positive or negative way. I don't think that you can say Zoom
is bad just because hiding the defendant is bad.

------
crankylinuxuser
I would think the closest analogy would be to the death penalty in the USA
surrounding lethal injections.

Every company that is knowingly being used for the cocktail to kill someone
has made the supply gone. They refuse to supply to any state that diverts to
executions. Sure, the executions are 'legal' (removing jurors who are
ethically against death penalty is a whole different issue).... But the
companies manufacturing these chemicals don't want anything to do.

I wonder how Zoom is going to handle this in the future? Even though they
obviously had 0 input for Singapore executing a citizen, the article makes it
sound like Zoom was somehow, peripherally complicit with state sanctioned
murder.

------
wayneftw
I am constantly in awe that we live in a society which has no clue what
consciousness is or when it begins in a human and despite that we've made
abortion legal while at the same time making getting high and putting what you
want into your own body illegal to the point of executing offenders.

How (and why) is it that almost the entire world is dancing to the same tune
with regards to the War on Drugs?

I'm convinced that the people who keep drugs illegal are profiting immensely
from these policies. Otherwise, why wouldn't we arrest people only when they
commit a victim-ful crime or potentially victim-ful crime, e.g. arresting
people for drunk driving rather than just for drinking...

~~~
tomohawk
Legalize drugs and let people do what they want and be responsible for their
own actions.

-or-

Have a welfare state

Pick one.

You can't have a welfare state and at the same time let people do whatever
they want with their bodies, because the cost will be borne by everyone.

~~~
philipkglass
I would expect the financial costs of providing a welfare state to _decrease_
if you offered drug addicts their choice of addiction treatment or free drugs.
Right now addicts are pushed toward treatment even if they don't want it.
Common street drugs are inexpensive to manufacture. Treatment services are
subject to Baumol's cost disease. Treatments are also unlikely to permanently
alter behaviors of people who are being _pushed_ toward behavioral changes
rather than spontaneously seeking to change.

The state could buy an addict a 40 year supply of opiates (wholesale) at the
same cost as 3 months of outpatient rehab. Incarceration is even more
expensive than outpatient treatment.

~~~
tomohawk
That is your choice of what the state's treatment ought to be. You see how
drug dependence leads to dependence on the state? How the state becomes a drug
dealer? And the family of that addict will still suffer. That requires yet
more state support.

This ends up with a system where drug dependence is subsidized by the state
and taxpayers. Things that are subsidized tend to increase.

But the mechanism by which the state will intervene may very well be different
once the cost of that approach becomes known, and people who are working and
paying taxes decide they want the mechanism to be different.

------
mberning
There are signs on the border with Malaysia that say drug smuggling is
punishable by death with minimal prosecution.

------
morninglight
\-- Death by Zoom -- I can't think of a more inhumane and painful way to die.

