I want to remind this court that the same people who had reduced my client to a bureaucrat to whom people had lost identity and just became numbers, through their system of obedience (Fromm, 21). Just to prove that my client was not acting out of his free will or with his conscious, I would refer to the Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo, 16) where young men were put in a simulated prison. Though they were healthy men, the conditions disillusioned them and they became totally submissive. In this light, I put it before this court that my client had been psychologically tuned from his consciousness. He had lost touch with reality and was acting just like a machine to his superiors, just doing what they wanted. In other words, if the court sentences him, it will just be a cover-up for the real culprits.
I would also refer this court to Milgram (38) on the experiment on the teacher who had to shock a student once he failed to correctly follow the wordings given. From this set-up, we realize that the experimenter messes up the psychology of the subject, such that even when the action commanded is ethically incorrect, the subject’s first role is to please the higher authority who is giving the command. As commonly said, guns don’t kill but men do. In this context, I would put my client in the position of the gun. I therefore pose this question to the court, between the gun and the holder, who should be punished for the atrocities?
One may argue that my client could have refused to take the orders given. I readily agree with this; it is true in the civilian world but not in the military. At this point, I want to point out that the crimes for which my client is on trial today were committed while he was in the military. My client had been caught between a rock and a hard surface. He was powerless and desperate. After these incidences, he could just sit at his desk and shuffle papers with no authority at all (Milgram, 41). If he rejected the orders, he would have been taken through a court martial by the military, as this act would defy the oath of office that he had taken (Eichmann, 2). My client painfully did this since it was a do or die sort of situation. Even if the same incidence were to happen today, my client, and everyone else in this room, would probably do the same thing (Parker, 1; Jerry, 4).
Lastly, your Honor, I would request this court not look at my client as the perpetrator of these atrocities, but a victim of circumstance, an honest man who in the line of duty had to be involved in things that go against his beliefs and engage in activities which haunt him to date (Euchmann, 5). He has suffered cruel treatment from everyone, just because no one cared to look deeper and unearth the truth of the matter, that my client was used against his will. I request this court not to join the masses who just want to pin the blame on anyone, just to vent out their anger. I hope that he court in its ruling will pursue real justice and not use my client as a scapegoat for the wrongs of other.
Works Cited
Burger, Jerry M. Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey? 2006. E-book. 17th Nov. 2011.
Fromm, Erich. Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem. 1963. Web, 17th Nov. 2011.
Milgram, Stanley. The Perils of Obedience. n.d. Web, 17th Nov. 2011.
Remember.org. Eichman’s Final Plea. Web, 17th Nov. 2011.
Zimbardo, Phillip G. Stanford Prison Experiment. Web, 17th Nov. 2011.
