Laws, Morals and Juries: Is it Our Duty to Ignore Our Own Morals?

The sentencing on November 5, 2006 left Saddam Hussein facing the same fate that many of his countrymen had under his regime: death. This sentence, and the guilty verdict itself, can hardly come as a surprise to most people, and it seems that many people found it not only expected but also justified. Others, raising moral objections, ask who we are to condemn someone to death, and claim that it makes us no better than him. Is it appropriate, though, for a society, or its individual citizens, to give more weight to morals than to laws?

Ask any person you can find and there will be some laws with which they disagree, whether for moral or other reasons. One need barely notice politics to see that there are many issues that are hotly contested. It could not be more clear that we will have a law that pleases everyone, well, probably never. Our society is so diverse and morals issues are so open to personal interpretation, that we will never reach complete agreement.

Is that not the reason that we have a structured society with a government and laws? Have we not discovered through history that anarchy is un-conducive to groups of people living together? Did we not create laws, at least in part, to deal with our moral differences and ensure everyone's rights?

It has been proven conclusively enough for a 'guilty' verdict that Saddam Hussein's morals and personal standards of behavior did not fit within the planet's global laws. This is the basis for the situation, the reason for his death sentence: he felt his position, his desires, his morals, or lack there of, super ceded global laws and standards of conduct. Though the average citizen's application of their morals as above the law will never reach nearly the horrendous levels possible by a dictator such as Saddam, at the most basic level, it is the same problem.

Living in a society dictates that one accept the societies' laws and policies, work for social change, or leave the society to join another., not make up and follow the person's own rules. With America being a democracy, we are in a fortunate position, one where acts as simple as voting or campaigning for a favored candidate can help ensure that leaders and the laws they pass align as closely as possible with our personal morals. However, we still have a responsibility to follow the laws regardless of whether we believe in them, whether our candidate is chose, or whether our moral stance goes unrepresented.

In the case of Saddam Hussein, perhaps the ruling and sentencing created no moral dilemma. It is possible that the atrocities attributed to him made the result seem so clearly warranted that morals were never weighed against the law. The other possibility, of course, is that when weighed, the crimes were such that the verdict seemed morally justified. Either way, is it appropriate - not just in this case, but ever - for a judge or jury to give weight to their own morals in deciding the verdict or the sentence?

What would have happened had those trying Saddam Hussein been morally opposed to the death penalty? What if they had disagreed with the laws he was accused of breaking, and found him 'not guilty' because they felt that what he had done was not a crime? Would it have been appropriate for them to have judged him 'not guilty' simply because they didn't feel it was there place to judge him, or to return a lesser sentence because they didn't feel that they should be able to sentence someone to death?

This is happening all over America with our jury system. People are placing their morals and beliefs above society's laws. The responsibility of judging whether a law has been broken is being set aside in favor of personal morals judgments of whether the situation should be a crime. Is this an appropriate behavior for members of a society, giving weight to personal morals rather than laws when serving on a jury? If people do this in day to day life, they are faulted for breaking laws. Will people continue to follow laws if they find that their juries are deciding not whether they have committed a crime, but whether the action should be a crime?