Basically, I have a sci-fi world with intelligent animals. The story is that long after humans disappeared from the Earth, animals eventually become intelligent and made their own society to replace them. One major development in their history is that predators and prey agreed to live in harmony, signing treaties, making laws, and generally working very hard to ensure lasting peace between natural enemies.
One aspect of this is of course prosecuting animals that engage in predation. The way criminal trials work in this world is that every animal has the right to be tried by members of their own species or taxonomic group, who are also responsible for carrying out sentencing. Each animal has a taxonomic government to answer to, so if you’re a cat you are under the jurisdiction of the Feline government, mouse, Rodent government, bird, Avian government, etc. Each animal follows the same basic laws and regulations that all taxonomic governments agree on, things like prohibiting predation is one of these, but each government can also pass taxon-specific legislation, and are also able to determine criminal penalties independently.
The Felines only had their revolution a few years ago, when they overthrew their old kingdom which was very pro-predation, and made a republic that has signed the Interspecies Peace Agreement and is therefore very anti-predation. Because it’s so recent, the Felines also have the harshest punishments for a predation conviction made after the revolution. One count of first degree predation (when you personally kill then eat an animal) is an automatic life in prison without parole, the same penalty as “regular” murder without eating the victim, two or more counts is life in prison unless the prosecution requests for the death penalty at the start of trial and this is authorized by both the judge and the Feline Ministry of Security. Generally, courts stop at two predation convictions even if it’s obvious that the defendant committed more, since that’s enough to either put them away forever with no chance of parole, or kill them. Second degree predation, AKA simple predation, where you eat already dead animals that someone else killed, is treated much less harshly and sentencing options only has fixed term imprisonment possibly with parole, though with restrictions afterward like you can’t work in the government or security-critical industries unless the court lifts those restrictions on a case by case basis. The ISPA lists execution after being convicted beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime that causes the death of two or more other animals as the only exception to the no killing rule, and it can only be done by members of the same species or taxonomic entity, and is also subject to oversight and can even be blocked outright by other ISPA members through the ISPA Inter-Taxon Court, so they also do not have full autonomy on who they can execute, and taxa that have the death penalty much also must make their execution methods (which are mandated to always prioritize minimizing suffering), judicial procedures, and statistics public.
They do also use the threat of execution as a way of getting information about a predation case though. If they catch a Feline who is apart of a predation ring, it’s better than nothing but they’d obviously much rather take down the leader and the entire organization. The Feline Ministry of Security can basically tell the accused “Look, your trial date has been set, the prosecution has requested authorization to use the death penalty from us, and you know what evidence they have on you. We’re still trying to decide if we want to grant that request. It’s up to you and we can’t force you to give us any information, but is there anything you want to tell us about your organization or do you want to gamble with whether you’ll be found guilty or not?” Funnily enough most of these cats don’t care that they’re killing sapient prey animals that have lives and families and stories, but break real fast when it’s their own life on the line.
The Felines (and any ISPA member for that matter) can also arrest other species if they commit a crime on their territory or against a their own animals, but within the Interspecies Peace Agreement member species, animals have the right to stand trial and receive sentencing by their own species or taxon, so most they can do is investigate the crime, form a case with evidence, and then extradite the defendant back and forward their findings to the government that actually has jurisdiction. Most they can do to a non-Feline is detain them, extradite, and then ban them from Feline territory. However, any ISPA non-signatories, AKA predators that are actually predators and eat prey, who engage in predation, either against any ISPA member species anywhere in the world, or on ISPA territory against any animal; are not granted this right (obviously, since if you extradited them back to their own territory they’d be home free). So if you eat a cat or eat a mouse or bird or any other animal on Feline territory, you are dealt with just like any predatory cat by the Feline government regardless of what the laws by your own taxonomic government is.
I should also add that every animal is intelligent/sapient in this world. So predation really would be like murder. No copouts like eating fish or whatever.
Even in universe this is quite controversial even among prey species so I’m not trying to claim that this is the ideal state of the law, but I’m more trying to make sure if this makes sense or not. I also know that they will almost certainly have very different morals and ethics for humans, but then again I’m writing this story for humans so not sure how relevant that actually is. Is the motivation of having a death penalty despite not even allowing animals to eat meat a realistic one?
A) Remember that humans are animals. We may be more intelligent than others, but we’re still animals. Additionally, despite having evolved from apes, most apes have different personalities and instincts than our own. They still share many similarities with us, but gorillas, for an example, see bared teeth as a threat, while chimps view it as a sign of submission or non-hostility, and finally, humans view it differently depending on context (bared teeth can be a sign of happiness, fear, anger, etc). As such, while you might use the “primitive” personalities as a starting point, remember that they’re likely to change as the species gains intelligence and splits from their ancestors.
B) if you want an example of a series that handles the predator/prey dynamic in a mature context, try Beastars/Beast Complex. I’d recommend the manga over the anime.
C) I can see the logic of execution going both ways, especially in the context of a predator/prey society. I could see it as being a symbol of an individual’s worthlessness, i.e. he’s so worthless we killed him and discarded his meat; not even the apex predators want to eat him.
I could also see it going the other direction, with execution being banned or using highly toxic chemicals to discourage people from trying to scavage the bodies.
I could see execution being a means to supply meat for the predator market, which might come with its own complications which could be explored. For an example, it’d be very easy for executions to become commonplace if executions are the only (legal) meat source. As such, there could be corruption which drives the death penalty to be applied liberally. Maybe there’s an issue where predator population growth is outpacing executions, and as a result, there’s a party pushing for “open season” on prey species.
Just some thoughts.
I definitely try to fit species specific things into their respective cultured as best as I can. For example, a slow blink and head turn in Feline culture is akin to bowing in classical East Asian cultures. In-universe, there are even “How and when to slow blink in Feline territory, Feline etiquette 101” tutorial videos for other species traveling there now that the Felines are ISPA signatories and relatively safe, because its etiquette isn’t super straightforward and they do want to make an effort to tailor their behavior to who they’re interacting with. A lip lick from a dog (a Canid in general) is common knowledge to nearly all species as a gesture of discomfort or stress in the same way it is for real dogs (which is important to know because it could also be mistaken for “I want to eat you” if you don’t know the context, as is a cat fidget-moving the tip of their tail. Another real-life parallel that I took inspiration from: in Mandarin Chinese (I think it’s the same in Cantonese but not completely sure), the word for “that” when referring to the object or subject matter of focus, and is also a very common expression whose purpose is similar to the “uhh…” that English speakers say when they’re trying to think of what to say next, sounds very similar to the n-word, and the worse one of the two at that. This is nobody’s fault, it’s just an unfortunate coincidence because those two things developed independently, but it still causes unnecessary friction when certain cultures interact and a major part of the solution is to have both cultures know the other’s context and be mindful of that. I was actually explicitly taught this by my parents as a kid, because we’re Chinese immigrants in Canada where there are also a lot of black people and people in general are a lot more familiar with that sound being a word you really shouldn’t be saying. All this is to say that I do try to take advantage of the fact that they are animals in the story, using my own life in a multicultural setting as some of my inspiration for how different animals with different, sometimes conflicting behaviors can interact amicably.
This actually takes place millions of years after humans mysteriously disappeared from the planet, so they know about humanity and our history from the ruins we left. But they also don’t judge humanity as a species for what we did in the same way we in our modern day don’t judge, for example, Ancient Mesopotamia and rail on them all the time. Animals being united hating humans felt way too clichéd so if you or I went there, as long as we abide by their laws they will totally be cool with it!
Among most anti-predation carnivore species (former predators basically), the majority thought is “we kind of need to repent for our entire history of predation, and we’ll do that by coming down as hard as we can on cases of predation and basically ‘avenge’ the animals they killed as a way to clear our own names.” However, most of the “prey” species are against the death penalty even for carnivores because they see it as "well you’re still killing animals and even killing carnivores isn’t right, and also a slight amount of mistrust at predator species that claim to have sworn it off still engaging in killing.
As for providing food, not in this world. They don’t even allow lab grown meat despite being technologically past the point when they can make it. And yes, part of that is explicitly to not incentivize use of the death penalty.