A Moral Question Involving Homicide

I have little interest in justice whatever that means to you personally.

Based on its utility of course. How effective is this deterrent? Is the death penalty really a deterrent? It doesn't seem to me that murder was prevented even in the days of hanging mobs and lynchings. 

I take that as a no, which is quite extreme. It’s to suggest that if someone were to say, murder your child, you would be fine with that person going on to live their life as if nothing happened provided they don’t do it to anyone else. You’re entitled to that view though.

We’re also not talking about the death penalty. I think it’s pretty well established that the death penalty does little to nothing to deter murder which makes sense because compared to life in prison, the person if caught will essentially lose the remainder of their life either way. But getting caught is irrelevant if there is effectively no punishment at all.

(You will notice my focus is on protecting the public and not on punishing the guilty).

Do any animals, other than human, practice the above policy? I dont think so.

Well elephants and crows are both known to hold a grudge but it is unclear to what degree they are assigning guilt.

There are a whole host of articles like this about crows and elephants trainers have long known that their charges apparently remember someone who has done them injury and react aggressively.

I said it was unclear to what degree the animals are motivated by revenge.

Not really a grudge.....More like remembering and acting defensively.

The animal response would be instinctive, whereas the human response is intellectual.

Does the Crow go back to it's roost in an evening and sit brooding over how it will get the bastard next time he sees it?

Lets imagine for purposes of edification there is a married couple. Person 1 in the married couple is quite unhappy with Person 2. So much so that Person 1 hires(pays) Person 3 to kill Person 2. 

Person 3 kills person 2. This plot is uncovered by Law Enforcement and both are arrested. 

Should Person 1 or 3 be charged with homicide[1], or both? Why?

Should Person 1 or 3 receive the more severe punishment? Should their punishment be equal? Why? 

What critiques do you have, if any, with how homicide, and its variations, is classified and prosecuted?(in the US) Why?

If none, what aspects are particularly appealing? Why? 

[1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/homicide

• if PX intentionally, repeatedly, inserts & extracts of a portion of steel into PY's chest, perforating PY's heart such that it stops beating, PX is guilty of murder. that PX used an implement to effect the murder is immaterial. 
  
• if PX intentionally bails out of a car that is left heading, driverless, on a course where it will run over PY, then PX is guilty of murder. that PX used an implement that didn't require his continuous, active intent to effect the murder is immaterial. if, after bailing out, PX immediately realizes his error and begins running after the car, making all possible effort to avoid the murder he'd set in motion, but fails, PX is still guilty. 
  
• if PX works in a dangerous industrial environment, and removes a safety lock-out for a machine in which PY is working, such that PZ comes and turns on the machine, killing PY, PX is guilty of murder. that the final impulse of human will effecting the death of PY belonged to PZ instead of PX is immaterial
  

notable aside:

if PX works in a dangerous industrial environment, and, instead of manually removing a safety lock-out, by complete chance notices that PY failed to properly lock-out their own work environment such that, when PZ comes to turn on the machine, PY will die, PX will be guilty of murder. that PX took no positive action to bring about what was PY's impending death is immaterial.

however, this can only be morally condemned, and cannot be legally condemned. so-called Good Samaritan laws are virtually always wrong-headed as far as I can tell. 

aside to the aside—this does not morally preclude justice being enacted as if in a tribal village, where the nuances of individual cases are given more careful consideration and thus can afford the case-by-case evaluation that must occur to allow for, shall we say, a guilty verdict

• if PX works in a dangerous industrial environment, and , and then, with personal assurances, beckons PZ come remove the safety lock-out for a machine in which PY is working and turn on the machine when no one would otherwise have done so, killing PY, PX is guilty of murder. that the final impulse of human will effecting the death of PY belonged to PZ instead of PX is immaterial.
  
• and finally, if PX beckons PZ to come and murder PY, and PZ does so when they would demonstrably not otherwise have, then both PX & PZ have committed murder. that the final impulse of human will effecting the death of PY belonged to PZ instead of PX is immaterial.
  

• am I, in the crowd of a street brawl screaming "kill him", guilty of murder? what if the actual murderous brawler wouldn't have hit quite as hard or as many times without the jeers?
  
• am I guilty of murder if I know that the meter man comes to check the meter at a random time once a decade when I throw a bucket of knives out the window that's a story above the meter and it JUST HAPPENS to be the day he's there, at the exact time? what if he comes once every year instead of every decade? month? day? once every minute? 
  
• am I guilty of murder if I give birth to someone who grows up to murder of someone?