Ethics of Virtue or Ethics of Care

You are a homicide investigator and are interrogating someone you believe picked up a 9-year-old girl in a shopping mall and the molested and murdered the girl. He is a registered sex offender, was in the area, and although he does not have any violence on his record, you believe he must have done it because there is no other suspect who had the means, opportunity, and motive. You have some circumstantial evidence (he was seen in a video following the child) but very little good physical evidence. You really need a confession in order to make the case. You want to send this guy away for a long time. After several hours of getting nowhere, you have a colleague come in with a file folder and pretend that the medical examiner had obtained fingerprints on the body that match the suspect’s. You tell him that he lost his chance to confess to a lesser crime because now he is facing the death penalty. He says that he will confess to whatever you want him to if the death penalty is taken off the table. Do you tell him what you did? Do you tell the prosecutor?

Then answer these questions

a) Was the conclusion you reached the same as that of your classmate who used a different ethical system than you?

b) Do you agree with the conclusion reached by your classmate? Why or why not? Be specific.

c) Which system do you think came up with the best response (the system you used or the system your classmate used)? Explain.

d) Which system would you have preferred to use to solve this dilemma if allowed to chose any of the six ethical systems?