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Ok, I agree with most things you say, but just to clearly separate out the practical rules that must be put in place to protect the median case, versus the purely ethical side of things:
Is it or is it not fine for a 14 year old who wants to fuck a 30 year old to be allowed to fuck the 30 year old? If not, where is the psychological harm coming from?
But why? Why should it be illegal if there's ample documentation that the person being killed actively consented to and wanted to be killed?
No. The harm comes from the 14 year old not knowing what they're agreeing to and being too scared to say no once it starts.
Because we as a society have agreed to grant as much protection as possible to everyone, even to people who are either stupid or mentally disturbed enough to want to be killed, because we generally value human life. There is also the fact that if consent was an exception, so many murderers would claim the "but they actually consented" defense which would drag out the (already unbelievably long) criminal justice process of putting murderers in prison.
Okay, the latter is something I hadn't considered. But the former: what do you mean by "what they're agreeing to"? They're agreeing to stick their dick into someone they wanted to stick their dick into anyways.
I don't see why this is a useful protection to grant.
But we're not talking about the general case. We're talking about the specific case of someone who no longer values their own life and actively wishes for it to be taken away.
This would be trivially solved by requiring a high bar of evidence for this defense. Can they produce the amount of documentation that Meiwes and Brandes had on hand, signed and notarized and what have you? 99.9% of murders are not going to have that on file.
They may have agreed to that. But they don't know about the complex emotions that comes with the act and their minds are not mature enough to handle it. It's more than just the raw physical act that takes place.
The theory goes that suicidal people are not in their right mind and if they were cured of their afflictions would no longer wish to die. By giving up this protection we would be causing thousands or even millions of unnecessary deaths.
We still do everything in our power to prevent suicidal people from taking their own lives. We don't just ignore them and leave them to their own devices or even actively encourage them to kill themselves.
It's not just being able to eventually adjudicate the claim, it's also the amount of judicial resources spent on frivolous claims (especially since, as you admit, the defense would only be successful in vanishingly rare scenarios). Do you know the saying, "the process is the punishment"? How the process for resolving disputes or incidents, and it being dragged out for a long period of time, is itself a punishment? Defendants can cause that sort of punishment too. The defendant and/or their lawyers will do absolutely everything they can to keep the defendant out of jail, and that includes claiming defenses that have no hope of success, but still result in delays and time, effort, and resources spent having to rebut the claim by prosecutors and witnesses.
As I said, allowing this sort of defense at all would result in the second-order consequences of spawning endless litigation over whether someone consented to being murdered, especially if there was a high bar of evidence.
"They totes consented to it, the document was notarized by this guy!" "Hang on, is that notary even licensed? Looks like his license expired." "Yes, but, he got it reinstated, so it's valid!" "Yeah but, look at this recent state law, says he has to renew in a month, and he didn't." "Hang on, what about..." and so on, arguments like that, ad infinitum. It's already hard enough to put away murderers, we don't need to make it harder.
That's only one way to look at it, no? By demanding such "protection" we cause a lot of unnecessary suffering.
If ad infinitum problems crop up, that's a bug of the legal system, not of the moral code behind the legal system. Not every legal system has this issue.
Was the notary licensed at the time of notarization? If so then it's legit. If not no. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes of the court's time with a sufficiently competent legal system.
It's only "unnecessary suffering" if you ignore the suffering caused to loved ones when someone they knew and loved has died. Most people are distraught when a friend, family member, relative, etc. commits suicide.
No, you can't just ignore second-order consequences. Not every change you make to a system is isolated and affects only that one particular area of the system. Laws can interact in sometimes surprising ways. For example, if a state legalizes marijuana, then cops can no longer use the smell of marijuana alone to establish probable cause for searching a vehicle. Or if it's legal in a state to carry a concealed firearm (especially permitless carry) then cops can no longer "stop and frisk" a suspect based on someone saying they're armed, unless they also say they're committing a crime in some way (the standard is armed and dangerous).
Fixing the problems with using notaries as the basis of evidence is not so simple. If we allowed murder in the case of consent, there would be a huge incentive to create fake notaries or otherwise fake documentation supporting the murder. After all, it's easier than getting away with murder by killing witnesses, covering up evidence or the other usual means of doing it. And it's not like the victim can even testify against them. The short story "Infodeath" by Ben Sheffield provides a good example where (spoiler alert) someone gets tricked into signing paperwork saying they wanted to commit suicide by lethal injection, then gets forced to have said lethal injection, and dies nonconsensually.
That "suffering" should be ignored as they deserve it for not relieving their "loved one's" suffering. If someone you love is suffering so much that they kill themselves, you owe it to them to bear the pain their death causes you. It's the least you can do since you failed them so miserably while they were still alive.
If someone is suicidal it's not because you failed them, it's not because society failed them, it's because something in their brain is making them want to kill themselves. The vast majority of suicidal bouts last less than two minutes, which is why very simple interventions like locking rooftops and withdrawing gas ovens are usually enough. The suicidals I have known were good, decent people who regretted both their own suffering and the suffering they couldn't help inflicting on their loved ones.
You failed them so you deserve this.
If you were just nicer to me, I wouldn't be like this.
This is the logic of narcissists and abusers.
And "How dare you kill yourself to relieve your own suffering. What about my suffering?" isn't?
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