Blog 2 Ethical Issues In the News
Verdict of the murder
of Chris Kyle & Chad Littlefield
Since this week’s chapter talks about learning moral lessons
from stories I thought I would talk about one of the most prevalent stories we
hear today: the wartime story. In the typical wartime story we are taught what
it means to h ave duty, honor, and how glorious it is to die in battle. However,
in the second half of the 20th century, we started to see stories come out
about how dark and horrifying war can actually be.
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Enter American Sniper a war movie showing the inner struggle
between coming home and going back to war zones can be. This book/movie has
brought up quite the controversy as it glorifies a man’s life that has had 160
confirmed kills in his tours in Iraq. This brought up many ethical debates such
as: Is it okay to shoot children if they are considered a possible threat
against American lives? Are all 160 of these killings justifiable? At what
point can a man whose job is to kill come back and be a functional member of
society? The ironic part of the movie is after Chris finally comes home he is
killed by another veteran he's trying to help get through PTSD (post-traumatic
stress disorder) out on a gun range.
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This all leads up to my news article about the verdict of
Eddie Ray Routh the convicted murderer of Chris Kyle and his buddy Chad Littlefield.
Eddie Ray Routh was convicted guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in
prison with no chance of parole. I found this verdict quite surprising since
the state of Texas is known for their acts of capital punishment and I thought the death sentence was going to be an option. At the end of
American Sniper, the movie depicts the funeral of Chris Kyle and shows how
proud the state of Texas was of his service. The jurors only took three hours
to decide the verdict on this case. Now, I'm not saying this man didn't deserve
what's coming to him, because I most certainly do. However, due to the
popularity of the film and how celebrated Chris Kyle was in Texas don't you
think the court was a little quick to decide this man was guilty and not guilty
by reason of insanity? Couldn't the whole courtrooms opinion of this case been
completely swayed by what happened in the movie? The guy definitely has a few
screws loose and I believe he got what he deserved.