What conundrum? The US has people in jail for decades without a trial like some medieval country ruled by a psychopathic king, and when someone finals manages to untangle the mess by removing a penalty that’s barbaric on its own, the peanut gallery finally gets all worked up.
It’s times like this that I remember that the US is moraly closer to Russia than to western Europe.
You are never going to get most Americans to care about anything bad that happens to the people who were behind 9/11. The ethics of treating prisoners don’t even go into it for them. And the ones who do consider it often say it doesn’t apply to such heinous crimes.
Even for much lesser criminals who still do horrible things, I even see people here on Lemmy suggest not just capital punishment, but torture.
Maybe, but I think a lot of humans have a bloodthirsty taste for vengeance when they hear about someone committing an atrocity. In fact, I think the more difficult position is to be able to put that very common need for vengeance that so many people have aside because it isn’t ethical.
I personally have not had an issue with this, but I have said to more than one person that (for example) hoping a rapist will get raped in prison doesn’t make any sense from an ethical standpoint and getting them to understand that.
