circumstances. i do understand that torture would be used if we ever had a ticking bomb situation in which torture could help prevent a mass terrorist attack and what i called for is if we re going to have torture, there ought to be accountability and visibility. that s why i called for torture warrants. i m against torture but in favor of a torture warrant. now, on the death penalty, look, if any crime deserves the death penalty, certainly it s this crime but we have to ask ourselves the pragmatic question. number one, would it do more harm than good to execute this person, turn them into a martyr, have the countdown, have his picture all over the muslim world, make him into a role model. remember that for the most part, we haven t executed other terrorists and we haven t lost our moral credibility, we didn t execute the weathermen, we re making movies of them now, one is teaching at columbia, another teaching at university of chicago. we didn t execute many of the other terrorists. y
ticking bomb situation in which torture could help prevent a mass terrorist attack and what i called for is if we re going to have torture, there ought to be accountability and visibility. that s why i called for torture warrants. i m against torture but in favor of a torture warrant. now, on the death penalty, look, if any crime deserves the death penalty, certainly it s this crime but we have to ask ourselves the pragmatic question. number one, would it do more harm than good to execute this person, turn them into a martyr, have the countdown, have his picture all over the muslim world, make him into a role model. remember that for the most part, we haven t executed other terrorists and we haven t lost our moral credibility, we didn t execute the weathermen, we re making movies of them now, one is teaching at columbia, another teaching at university of chicago. we didn t execute many of the other terrorists. yes, we did timothy mcveigh. this is a 19-year-old. he may have information
they didn t see the private funeral of martin richard, the 8-year-old who was blown to bits by a shrapnel-packed bomb these bombers created. a society without the moral competence to impose the ultimate punishment for a crime like this is a society that has turned its back on a crime that shakes the foundation of civilized life and a society without that moral competence in the context of the death penalty probably has forfeited its moral competence all together. okay. alan dershowitz, it would be an abrogation of moral competence if america doesn t execute dzhokhar tsarnaev. what s your reaction? well, first of all, i m opposed to torture under all circumstances. i do understand that torture would be used if we ever had a ticking bomb situation in which
if we had a ticking bomb terrorist case. which we ll get to, we ll sell the book, right? i have a torture scene with a ticking bomb nuclear terrorist case. you re using parlance. if there were a terrorist caught and he knew there was a nuclear bomb in the harbor of new york that was going to kill a million people, we would torture him. would that be the right moral decision? no. but if we re going to do it, i want to make sure we do it with accountability and visibility and not under the radar screen. i m not in favor of torture. but torture warrants. i don t favor the death penalty, but i favor death warrants. come back to what i said before, want to make sure people heard. you think it would have been morally wrong to torture that person in the ticking bomb situation. always morally wrong to torture, but we re going to do it we re going to do it. if we re going to do it, i want to make sure there is accountability. bush administration, waterboarding, did all those t
waynd to make sure we do it with accountability and visibility and not under the radar screen. i m not in favor of torture. but torture warrants. i don t favor the death penalty, but i favor death warrants. come back to what i said before, want to make sure people heard. you think it would have been morally wrong to torture that person in the ticking bomb situation. always morley wrong to torture, but we re going to do it we re going to do it. if we re going to do it, i want to make sure there is accountability. bush administration, waterboarding, did all those things. did dick cheney do what was right or wrong? they tortured promiscuously, they never could have gotten a warrant. you say a jurisprudence of torture. what does that mean? how could a court make that determination? we have jurisprudence of search and seizure, a whole range of things. why not torture? we have to decide it is a high enough level of probability, a high enough level of likelihood, last resort, nonlet