There is no doubt about it: a murderer can be wronged, and can be rightly awarded damages for the wrong done to him. For instance, supposes that a murderer is a brilliant artist and someone destroys all of the murderer’s paintings while he is in prison. It seems fair enough that the murderer can sue for damages. Again, it is one thing to be a murderer; it is quite another to be a child molester; and if the newspapers accuse a murderer of being a child molester, there is indeed something quite right about the murderer thinking that he has suffered an injustice owing to this false charge.
Bernie Madoff, for example, swindled people out of millions of dollars. He did not molest any children; and he would rightly take offense at that accusation.
Alas, the case of Tremayne Durham is nothing like any of the situations depicted above. Durham is suing for a refund from the man that he took hostage, after having murdered someone who worked for that man.
Durham had ordered an ice cream truck from Rob Chambers. However, Durham changed his mind about getting the truck and wanted a refund. So far so good. The problem is that Durham decided to take matters into his own hands in order to get the refund. Indeed, in the effort to obtain a refund, Durham ended up killing one of Chambers’ employees, namely Adam Calbreath. And there is the rub.
Surely a most natural thought is that in going so far as to commit murder in order to get the refund Tremayne Durham thereby forfeited his right to the refund. The right to money that we are owed is not an entitlement to do anything we please in order to obtain what we are owed. And if what we do is heinous enough, then it ought to turn out that we forfeit our right to the money that we are owed.
Otherwise, we end up with some utterly embarrassing moral and legal outcomes. Suppose, for instance, that Durham had decided to rape Calbreath instead of killing him. Why? Because he, Durham, felt humiliated in not getting his refund and he wanted to inflicted a sense of humiliation upon either Calbreath or Chambers.
Not all wrongdoings are heinous and, of course, we can debate whether a given wrongdoing is heinous enough. However, there can be no doubt about the heinous character of rape and murder. Accordingly, the very idea that the resources of the law itself could be used in order secure a refund for a person who commits such wrongdoing is indeed morally obnoxious. It is to profane the legal system. Yet, that is precisely what is happening in the case of Tremayne Durham.
The issue here is not whether the law can be rightly used to protect a criminal. Of course it can. Yet, we must not unwittingly legitimate heinous behavior; and that is precisely what we do if we allow a murderer to use the legal system to go after a refund when the murder was committed in order to obtain the refund.
As I have already indicated, someone’s being a murderer does not give anyone a right to keep or still the murderer’s precious paintings. By contrast, if the person who is owed a refund merely broke a window the owner’s home or office, I am still prepared to say that the person is still owed the refund—though minus the payment for the damage done.
But nothing can replace a life. Nothing can erase the psychological trauma of being raped. So when a person has committed one of these dastardly deeds and the resources of the state are used to secure his refund, then what we have is surely tantamount to a new form of a miscarriage of justice. Instead of a guilty person going free, what we have is a person has been guilty wrongly profiting from the resources of the legal system.
One aspect of the genius of the American legal system is that no one can be re-tried after having receiving a verdict of “not guilty”. Surely it is another thing entirely to profit from the resources of the American legal system when one has been found guilty of a heinous crime such as murder. Here we have a very simple and non-controversial principle, namely that murder is never an acceptable means to obtain money that one is owed and anyone who uses such a means thereby forfeits his right to use any legal resources to obtain that money.
One might very well ask: Why did they not they, the Founding Authors, think of that? The answer, I suspect, is that once upon a time—certainly when the Constitution was written—there would have been a sufficiently strong sense of shame that no person found guilty of committing murder in order to get his money back would ever have thought to do such a thing—unless, of course, the person deemed himself to be innocent. . Alas, there is little or no shame nowadays. Besides, Durham hardly claims to be innocent. Thus, the problem is not that he takes himself to be dealing with a wrong committed against him in the only way that he can. Quite the contrary, he is simply out to take advantage of an opportunity. And this he is doing using the taxpayer’s money. That is totally unacceptable.
I am willing to go so far as to that Durham should legally forfeit any claim to the money even if could use his own money to go after Chambers. Here is a simple principle: Murdering anyone (family members; employees) legally associated with the person who owes money to one automatically cancels debt. The debt is legally rendered non-existent.
Now, it needs to be said that Chambers does not come across as a particularly honest man. And as they say, “If it sounds too good too good to be true, then in all likelihood it is”. Just so, the way to go about dealing with a con-artist is not commit murder. Not allowing Durham to go after Chambers for the money does not in any way validate con-artists. Rather, it simply validates the principle that murder is never acceptable as a means of trying to secure what is owed to one.
The simple principle that I have put forward no doubt needs some modification. For example, we might want to make exceptions for instance where money is earmarked for family members, especially children, and so the money would go to them. So there can remain a debt to be settled when the money would go to people other than the murderer given that they have a legitimate claim to it. Exceptions would undoubtedly make for complexity. Alas, there will still be causes, where pristine clarity that the debt is canceled prevails. Durham’s situation is a case in point.
