Utilitarianism, rights, integrity, and political expediency

[MT Treasurer]

My biggest problem with this is, as usual, the premise of it all. Framing it as a binary choice (choosing the lesser of two evils in order to prevent the greater evil from happening or allowing the greater evil to happen so as not to commit any evil oneself, no matter how comparatively small) absolves the individual of his or her responsibility to exhaust all options to prevent both evils from happening — there’s way more at play here than a simple choice between two options.

The historical case you based this thought experiment off had to be almost completely rewritten for this to even be vaguely realistic. The actual (historical) execution took place in January, i.e. nearly a year before the election, not the day before; during the primary campaign, not the general election campaign, and it clearly served said individual's presidential ambitions, not the greater good of the nation, which is of course why it is often very aptly described as a deeply psychopathic act not uncommon for the politician we’re talking about here.

The fact of the matter is — and I’d really encourage everyone to think about this — that it’s very hard to even come up with a realistic case where the individual's only option is having to choose the lesser of two moral evils to prevent the greater moral evil from happening. There just aren’t many (plausible) scenarios one can think of here. In your case (going with the 'tweaked' version outlined in the OP), the politician's response could be something along the lines of "I will see to it that the criminals face maximum punishment, but only after their guilt is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. I cannot allow public pressure to override my judgment and integrity when human lives are at stake solely to win favor with the public. Trying to score political points in a situation like this would be a disqualifying act for any candidate seeking the highest office in the country." Conveying confidence and integrity is key here — however, the problem for the man who ordered the actual (historical) execution was that he wasn’t exactly known to possess much of that integrity, so of course ordering the execution was the easier way out for him. But what does that have to do with the "greater moral good the nation"? Nothing. You’re right that it’s a lot more difficult to navigate this issue when the criminal's guilt has been proven but his criminal responsibility/liability is in serious doubt — in that case, a lot of emotional imagery would probably need to be evoked (e.g. "executing this man may be akin to executing a child, and I cannot in good conscience order this execution before I haven’t been reassured that this man does not, in fact, possess the brain of a child.") to counter potent attacks from the opposition, but it again requires integrity and trust, something said individual just wasn’t able to generate because of his deep character flaws. Again, for this particular candidate, it’s much easier to just sign the death warrants. But it’s only really a "dilemma" because he allowed it to become one.

Now, if the criminal has been proven guilty AND fully responsible for his crime and the President still has qualms about giving the green light, why didn’t he push for the abolition of the death penalty during his first term? Seems like he wasted political capital and is trying to rectify that mistake by signing the death warrents of two criminals a few hours before the election — yet again, "the greater moral good of the nation" hardly seems to be the underlying motivation here.

And of all a sudden we’ve uncovered the pure evil beneath those seemingly noble motivations.