Deculpification
Saw a very stimulating episode of Black Mirror today, “White Bear”. A woman with amnesia is chased by hunters throughout the episode. At the end, it’s revealed that she is really a murderess, and the hunting games are punishment for her crime. A big part of what makes her punishment immoral is that she is unaware of who she is. Merely telling her who she is at the end of the episode is not enough. Because she has no memory of who she is, she cannot confirm or deny anything they are telling her. So they could be telling her a complete fabrication for all that she knows. What it comes down to is that we punish people because they have a “guilty mind”. The law recognises this in the form of the legal principle of mens rea. But they have erased this woman’s memory of who she is and what she did. They seem clearly, in so doing, to have erased her intention of harm as well, so how can they not have erased her guilty mind along with it? To be culpable for a crime you must have a guilt