The Ends Justifies The Means Analysis

Means or ends?
Machiavellian statement “the ends justifies the means” is very controversial in its own nature and even more when we start to think of it in a relation to a particular case. In the autumn of 2002, a 27-year-old Magnus Gäfgen kidnapped and eventually murdered a son of a wealthy German banker. As one would expect, Magnus Gäfgen was accused and sentenced to a life imprisonment the following year. However, surprisingly, he was not the only one accused in this case. A police officer was charged too for threatening Magnus Gäfgen with torture during the interrogation in order to gain some information about the kidnapped boy (“Thomas David Lukas Olsen,” n.d.). The police officer’s action of threating the perpetrator with torture is the main subject of this paper. Was the police officer’s action morally justifiable as means to save the boy’s life or was it morally wrongful because it violated kidnapper’s human rights? In this paper, I will argue that from a utilitarian point of view the police officer’s action may be justifiable because the consequences of this action led to gaining some information about the boy as well as the action may be deemed morally wrongful because it did not lead to a long-term maximization of happiness and it violated the perpetrator’s human

Magnus Gäfgen kidnapped the 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler in order to blackmail his affluent family. After a few days, the police arrested Magnus Gäfgen after he picked up the ransom money. However, he refused to tell when Jakob was hidden. Therefore, the police chief threatened the perpetrator with torture to make him speak. Eventually, Magnus Gäfgen confessed that he had already murdered the boy and the location of his body. After that he was convicted and sentenced. But surprisingly, the chief police officer was also convicted for violating Magnus Gäfgen’s rights (Sandel,