I believe that once you murder an innocent human being, you forfeit all of your human rights—including the rights to life, liberty, and freedom from torture. All of them. I also think states need to handle this differently than they have. Once a person has been proven beyond doubt to be a murderer, the state routinely violates that person’s right to liberty and sometimes takes their life, while continuing to recognize them legally as human. Instead, upon conviction for murder, the subject should have his or her citizenship revoked, accompanied by a formal declaration that the subject has forfeited legal humanity and, therefore, all human rights. The subject would become property of the state, no different in legal status from a government desk or chair. An inventory barcode would then be branded onto the subject’s forehead. Yes, this would be permanent and irrevocable—but so was the destruction of the innocent life, or lives, taken by the murderer. Anyone who argues that a murderer can or should be rehabilitated and eventually allowed to return to a normal life is morally bereft, a complete idiot, and should be slapped. The life that was taken represents an infinite debt to society and humanity, one that can never be repaid. Once a state adopts this framework for dealing with murder, however, it creates an opportunity for some good to come from the tragedy. Medical science currently relies heavily on animal experimentation in its search for treatments for human conditions. Yet animals often respond differently to treatments than humans do, frequently enough to create a serious problem. A new treatment is generally tested on human volunteers only after it has been shown to be safe and effective in animals. As a result, potentially valuable treatments that might be safe and effective in humans may be abandoned because they were either unsafe or ineffective in the test animals. This problem could be addressed by performing such testing on convicted murderers. The government could loan its property to pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, with a portion of any resulting profits going to the victims’ families. The ethical concerns that would normally prohibit such activities would be resolved by the fact that the test subjects were no longer legally human. They would, of course, remain biologically human and would therefore still be scientifically valuable test subjects, even though their legal status had changed. The reduction in human pain and suffering made possible by treatments developed through testing on murderers could be substantial. It could allow at least some good to come from the damage they caused. If a murderer survived a lifetime of numerous testing programs and eventually became too old to remain scientifically useful, the state could dispose of its property as it would an old chair—by tossing it into a wood chipper.
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