OrangePhilosophy

What he said is clearly false (I suspect that it was a slip of the tongue, are there reasons to think that it is not?). I suspect that what he meant was: "Everyone knows it's HARD to kill, even when it is the right thing to do." That is the closest paraphrase that I can come up with.

This also seems compatible with the claim that the deliberations would take longer. Decisions that have 'hard to do' (like killing) consequences just take longer to make. (This is your first point, I think.)

No, the context, I think, made it pretty clear that he was talking about killing as wrong in general, and that's why it's hard to do so in these cases too. It's just that when it came out he made it sound as if he thought killing was always wrong, which doesn't fit very well with saying "even when it's the right thing to do".

Okay then, what about: "Everyone knows it's wrong to kill, even when it is the LAWFULLY APPROPRIATE thing to do."? Might that fit the context?

It's no suprise that a contradiction was uttered on the news. This time of year, we are all sensitive to contradictions, given the amount of them we read. I'm no moralist (oops, I mean ethicist), but I think there is some question as to whether or not the claim is even truth evaluable.

I would have thought this simplest explanation appeals to the prima facie/ultima facie distinction. He might have meant that killing is always prima facie wrong, even when it is ultima facie the right thing to do.

But doesn't the following sentence still sound wrong?

"Everyone knows it's always prima facie wrong to kill, even when it's ultima facie the right thing to do?"

I just couldn't imagine anyone uttering such a sentence, even if it's technically true (and not because people don't use such terms -- I can't even imagine a philosopher saying something like this outside the context of trying to paraphrase this guy's statement). You don't say something is prima facie wrong when you have already determined that it's ultima facie the right thing to do. I'm having trouble expressng exactly why because I'm falling asleep. Maybe in the morning I'll have a clearer sense of why this seems unutterable to me, or maybe I'll realize that I'm just wrong.

The statement makes perfect sense from the point of view of a practising euthanasiast. "Every one knows it's wrong to kill, even when it's the right thing to do." Consider a person on trial for overdosing a loved one dying of a painful terminal illness - this person might consider killing morally wrong but also see a competing moral judgement regarding the quality of someone's life.

Someone putting down a favourite pet dog or cat after a long life might also say this.

I don't think that's right at all. Someone who views things according to a hierarchy of moral principles, some outweighing others (e.g. W.D. Ross) wouldn't be able to say this. Suppose it's the right thing to do to put down a pet dog due to its pain and unlikelihood of a good enough quality of life for what would remain of its life. That principle presumably outweighs the prima facie principle of not killing. Therefore, it's not wrong to kill in the case in question. As Jon said, maybe the person meant to say something like: it's prima facie wrong to kill, even when it's the right thing to do. That's not what the guy said, though.

It isn't "wrong to kill", because your life depends upon it. Without a death somewhere, where's the beef? My paraphrase of addled newsie would be "Despite the general rule against taking human life, it is a legal option in this situation that a jury may also find to be the appropriate punishment." ^..^

Maybe he used "knows" in the common way many people seem to do, that is, without commitment to the truth of the statement "known." If so, he might have meant: "Everyone strongly feels that it is wrong to kill, even when it is the right thing to do."