That is not what the Duke of Fraga said when they discussed this during the break. If this is some sort of negotiated concession to the radicals, Jonatan would really prefer to have known about it before he brought up the topic in committee.

"It seems to me that under the present system, a man who has already committed a capital crime has little left to lose by committing more, and much to gain if his capture was otherwise certain. I am not thinking of deserts, here, Your Grace, merely of the practical realities of administering justice.

...with that being said, I admit that I have some concern that even a very modest proposal to restore the laws of Arodenite Cheliax could be misconstrued by the floor as a proposal to torture children to death for failing out of school, and I think it is worth making it very explicit that any proposal we pass will not do that."

"I think if we stick to 'the penalties for murder and arson and treason should be a slow death' no one will get confused about whether we mean 'schoolchildren should be tortured for incompetence'."

In Almenar he doesn’t do that many torturous executions, they take too much time and effort and there’s usually not many around to see it anyways. They’re probably much more necessary and useful in the city. 

“Each day I’ve been surprised at how reasonable proposals get twisted - I think you are mostly right, Count Solpont, but we should be exceedingly clear on that in our bill.”

"If this is the principal concern in and of itself rather than metonymy there could be an age floor beneath which executions must be swift."

"That's very reasonable and I wouldn't object at all." As long as it's below the age of Valia Wain and confederates, of course.

"Simple, standardized punishments may be differentiation enough from the hideous contest that the Thrunes made of punishment, even if those punishments are severe enough to give malcontents pause."

He hasn't turned radical; he is mostly concerned about their proposal having the desired effect--it is not just the convention that might misinterpret them, but lawmen all over Cheliax putting it into place.

"It is Evil to torture criminals. Not merely 'not Good', Evil. Without exception. Asmodeus delighted in it, and in forcing all to witness it and stand by, because that damns everyone involved by degrees every time. If we wish to rescue Cheliax from Hell, we must stop. For massacre and high treason, or military courts, perhaps it is a necessary evil, but it is not in any way necessary for ordinary capital crimes. If something must be done for serial criminals, find a way which is not Asmodeus's."

"Is there a specific example you wish us to emulate? It does not seem a wise venue for experimentation. Furthermore, I tire of everything that Asmodeus does being rhetorically identified as a uniquely Asmodean evil. He did many things simply because they were functional. That having been said, mandatory attendance at executions seems to me superfluous and troublesome to enforce, and always has."

Jonatan doesn't, actually, dispute that it is strictly speaking Evil to torture criminals to death. But Aroden Himself spoke of how a virtuous man must sometimes be willing to do Evil, lest greater Evil arise from his refusal, and sparing use of torturous executions are one of the clearest examples of that.

"It is an error, I expect, to think only of those men we condemn to death, and not of their victims. If a man who has taken a single life believes there is nothing worse that can be done to him than simple execution, and so kills a dozen more, those souls should weigh no less heavily on our consciences. Perhaps Pharasma will condemn me for this, though she did not a century ago, but it would be a mistake to shirk our duties to our subjects merely out of such fears."

"Our first duty to our subjects is to pull them out of Hell's grasp. Keeping them alive and intact is the most important secondary duty, but never forget that the first takes priority. If pointless torment saves ten lives relative to swift deaths in private, then it might begin to be worthwhile. But it would damn every executioner and magistrate involved, and nearly every noble, especially starting from where we are, and the right trade between souls and lives is not clear. And for every man who commits murder for the joy or profit of it and kills a dozen more, who might be discouraged by impalement or drawing and quartering, there are two dozen other murderers who killed one man in the heat and will not do it again regardless. Torment may save two innocent lives for every torture, but I think it very unlikely it does more than that, and at that exchange rate it is a very foolish trade."

"Fiducia Agramunt, it is a necessary time for experimentation, whether or not it is wise, because we face the novel problem of Hell's hold over us. We must seek Good unusually strictly, because if we merely are as Good as our Arodenite forefathers we will remain damned for a generation. I suppose we could adopt Andoren methods wholesale, and that would surely pull us out of Hell, but though I suspect I would be less uncomfortable with taking that approach than most of this committee, I would still be leery of it managing only to pull us to the Abyss, and not Elysium, and so I do not recommend it."

"I'm sorry, I must have misheard the honored Archduchess. If torment saved two innocent lives for every torture that's obviously worth tormenting every single criminal, and unambiguously so. And it's an obvious lie that it damns everybody; in other countries this is how it is done, and nearly all nobles and magistrates aren't damned."

"It is traditional in some places for the role of 'executioner' to itself be a stay of execution; someone already damned by their actions can serve the state without significantly worsening their final position, and delay their own torment thereby." It is not a Good thing, but as necessary evils go, seems like a bargain sometimes worth striking.

"For what it's worth, Conde, we ended execution by torture in Menador. I said the same things beforehand, and I fully expected to see crimes increase. As far as I can tell, they didn't. I do think that it was important that this was unrelated to any actions of the populace, and wasn't seen as a forced mercy enacted because we couldn't torture them all. And it might be different in the cities. But it wasn't disastrous, even with Chelish people."

"I varied from year to year in the degree of torturous execution employed versus allowing convicts to kill themselves cleanly in their cells beforehand. I have numbers, if you want them - about a quarter of those convicted and a fifth of those convicted for things that would be crimes under just judges and fair law. It had no noticeable effect on the rate of crime in Kintargo either, though I would trust the results in Menador more strongly than my own."

Menador's results are actually very surprising. (Kintargo's would be surprising if he trusted the Archduchess to be accurately representing the situation.) Maybe Menador is catching criminals so quickly that almost no one has the chance to commit multiple crimes? ...Or maybe they're running into the same problem he's had with trying to convince his servants he won't have them put to death for insufficient devotion to Iomedae, or maybe they've come up with some clever scheme he hasn't thought of.

"What is Menador doing to discourage people who have already committed capital crimes from committing additional such crimes?"

Have you considered, if you're going to keep doubting Jilia's word, asking the Fiducia who is literally in this room to verify it? They have a spell for that.

It's not that she's a liar, it's that she's delusional. Wain wasn't lying either, and still managed to do incalculable damage to the country.

"Nothing we haven't always done. Menadorian nobles have always been responsible for directly enforcing justice, so there's been relatively little interruption in the system there, and I think that helps. But I don't have a good explanation. I thought that we had to be doing it, too."

Elias is mostly just unsure if this will win votes or cost them, and so stays silent for the moment.

"I admit that I am uncomfortable with the prospect of risking the ability of the whole country to keep order merely because it has yet to cause problems in Menador. With that being said, my understanding is that currently our magistrates are prohibited from sentencing men to a slow or painful death, regardless of the crime. Perhaps, as a compromise, we could simply lift that restriction, without mandating that they exercise it in any given case. If it turns out that our country is best served if it is exercised only rarely, then it can be exercised rarely; if it turns out to be needed more frequently, we will not have prohibited ourselves from employing one of the key tools of a functional government."

Are you calling Lastwall nonfunctional? Eh, someone else can say it.

Hmm.

"Allowing for flexibility in judgment and regional variation seems wise, yet I am enamored by the idea of standardization and predictable law. We do not want people lapsing into Asmodean traditions for lack of a superior example, and I am reluctant to have hundreds of imported lawmen applying the traditions of their homelands unthinkingly throughout Cheliax. Perhaps we should grade the punishments, create wide sentencing guidelines, and the headline of the bill will be banning the variation and ironic punishments that were the dark artistry of the Thrunes."

"Banning Asmodean punishments and bringing back traditional Arodenite punishments seems like a good way to make it clear to people that there is a difference and a middle ground between the present madness and Asmodeanism."

“I would support that. Some in the convention are trying to paint our every proposal as disguised Asmodeanism - we need to show the people a better, coherent vision. Aroden’s Cheliax was ready to be the seat of the Age of Glory - I doubt there is any better example to follow in this day. We can make allowances for the peoples’ current confusions and evils, but we should not compromise on the end goal.

Perhaps the proposal on punishments should be brought to the floor along with other returns to Arodenite traditions.”

"Do you imagine, either of you, that any human currently living and not recently resurrected remembers what Arodenite punishments were? No, that will not make anything clear to anyone outside the nobility, except perhaps a handful of underground historians. Further, they would not trust it if they understood the difference, because they are Chelish and know, with near absolute certainty, that anything the government says is a lie, telling them what they are supposed to believe. Only actions, and ones which are wildly different, are going to convince them we are any better. An extreme shift is necessary as a practical matter even if you do not accept the moral urgency."