It seems to make sense? I mean, it's not like someone is getting off scott free. But at least there isn't a body, and that should count for something. Attempted murder is overall less bad than actual murder.
I'll note that despite the above I'd probably prefer a justice system that focuses on deterrence and rehabilitation, and omits retribution.
A counterargument I can imagine is that if we punish the unsuccessful hiring of a hitman more lightly, then future hirers are more likely to err on the side of a hitman with a lower probability of success. But that seems improbable to me -- one doesn't hire a hitman to see them fail.
One small step further: someone who plans to hire a hitman should be punished, so that future people don't even think about it. Whether they manage to hire one is irrelevant.
Now you're punishing a thought crime and equating that with successful murder even.
But I would not equate it with hiring one. That's because the expected damage from planning to hire a hitman is smaller than that from actually hiring one. A year of punishment hurts the criminal the same regardless of which of those two scenarios holds, but the social benefit of punishing them is less. Therefore we should punish them less. (Unless we don't care about the welfare of someone who's been convicted at all. I think that's a sick position to hold -- even setting aside the possibility of false positives -- but it has its adherents.)
A real eye-opener for me regarding these questions of weighing the costs and benefits (i.e. the economics) of punishment was Thomas Friedman's book Law's Order. Until I read that, I thought the whole question was just a political fight. And while it certainly is a political fight, there's a much more objective kind of analysis available -- in fact, it's the norm in economics.
And thanks for the correction.
[1]http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo...
It also makes sense if one rejects retribution as illegimate but accepts proportionality as a basis for limiting on punishment. (Many doctrines of criminal punishment accept both retribution as a goal and proportionality as a limit, so...)
And what happens if you hire a hitman and by accident he kills 20 people instead of 1 person? [1]
[1] Say some poison or even he just goes berzerk with the gun or weapon.
Under what circumstances is one responsible for someone else's acts. Just because you hire someone to do something illegal, you are not responsible for all the illegal acts the other person might commit.
The mere fact of putting something in motion does not immediately mean one is responsible for all the outcomes of all actions in the chain.
I can buy your argument if they had intended to commit the murder themselves, because they can change their mind at any point up to actually doing it.
Similar situations to the hitman exist, too: planting a bomb, poisoning food, etc. Just because they're a bad bomb maker, or the poison wasn't potent enough, or the target doesn't drive/eat the food/etc doesn't change that they clearly intended to kill someone. To be clear, I draw a distinct line between possessing a bomb and actually planting it in someone's car - the former might be still be a crime but is clearly not the same severity as actually killing someone, whereas the actions the perpetrator took in the latter are indistinguishable, regardless of outcome.