Law and compassion
Sorry to my faithful readers for not updating.. I taunted (stayed up late) as usual and did not have the stamina and will to update. I think Im getting old here.
I went out with a friend recently. Lets call my friend M (for confidentiality).
M was discussing with me about Law and its pitfalls. Where some murderers are just given the life imprisonment sentence instead of death for brutally killing their victims. Then there are rapists who escape with only a few strokes on their ass and probably behind the bars for a while. Im sure there are ppl, including M, who felt that the offenders in some of these cases deserve more. I do agree that too many of them have escaped lightly.
However I did not expect M to suggest this new "law". M said this "Why dont we just implement a law where judges can choose to punish the criminal with the EXACT method they committed the crime?" Forgive my poor expression. M means that if u flagellated
your victim to death, then u ought to be whipped as well till yr last breath. Instead of just death thru hanging.
I quote an old case which M saw before. In the old world, where black discrimination was rife, a white farmer hired one black and one white farmhand to take care of his crops and animals. The black farmhand was given much more work than the white (reason's obvious). One day he just could not take it and took a short rest. Then the white employer saw him "lazing" and accused him of slacking. For that, the white employer dragged the black farmhand into his tiger's cage (he had many ferocious animals under his ownership) and saw the tiger rip him to shreds in front of his eyes, enjoying his cries of death. The black farmhand was consumed to the bone. Yucks!!
Then it so happened that the white farmhand saw the entire scene and telephoned the police. Eventually the employer only got a long-term jail sentence.
Forgive me if my case study bored readers but this is true. Do u think the sentence is fair and that M's new law theory should be practised with discretion? I believe that the law is compassionate and shld not practise this. However executing justice with the exact torment is the best way to ensure deterrence. After all does a rapist like to be screwed in his ass,literally?
I went out with a friend recently. Lets call my friend M (for confidentiality).
M was discussing with me about Law and its pitfalls. Where some murderers are just given the life imprisonment sentence instead of death for brutally killing their victims. Then there are rapists who escape with only a few strokes on their ass and probably behind the bars for a while. Im sure there are ppl, including M, who felt that the offenders in some of these cases deserve more. I do agree that too many of them have escaped lightly.
However I did not expect M to suggest this new "law". M said this "Why dont we just implement a law where judges can choose to punish the criminal with the EXACT method they committed the crime?" Forgive my poor expression. M means that if u flagellated
your victim to death, then u ought to be whipped as well till yr last breath. Instead of just death thru hanging.
I quote an old case which M saw before. In the old world, where black discrimination was rife, a white farmer hired one black and one white farmhand to take care of his crops and animals. The black farmhand was given much more work than the white (reason's obvious). One day he just could not take it and took a short rest. Then the white employer saw him "lazing" and accused him of slacking. For that, the white employer dragged the black farmhand into his tiger's cage (he had many ferocious animals under his ownership) and saw the tiger rip him to shreds in front of his eyes, enjoying his cries of death. The black farmhand was consumed to the bone. Yucks!!
Then it so happened that the white farmhand saw the entire scene and telephoned the police. Eventually the employer only got a long-term jail sentence.
Forgive me if my case study bored readers but this is true. Do u think the sentence is fair and that M's new law theory should be practised with discretion? I believe that the law is compassionate and shld not practise this. However executing justice with the exact torment is the best way to ensure deterrence. After all does a rapist like to be screwed in his ass,literally?
posted by S|M0nG at
11:20:00 AM
2 Comments:
Uh, wow, this is disturbing.
I don't wanna go into some big theoretical debate about the law, but suffice it to say that criminal law isn't about revenge as it is about justice. Of course, the line between the two is often blurred, but what your friend suggested is a clear manifestation of revenge - and that's not what criminal law is about, or should be about.
Maybe I'm too much of a bleeding heart liberal but my sympathies lie with the victim as well as the criminal. I don't believe in the death penalty. I don't believe in caning, either. What I do believe is that the law as it stands in this country services the rich and marginalises the poor, the have-nots, the not-privileged (I think the phrase 'underprivileged' is a lie that the privileged employ to make themselves feel better). Most of the time accused criminals can't get access to legal service because they're too shit poor, and you get instances in which mentally-retarded individuals represent themselves in court, without any knowledge of the law or what the hell they're doing. THAT'S the pitfall of this country's criminal system. It's utterly tragic and pathetic, and it doesn't help that at least 50% of people who enter law school aim to go into corporate practice.
"Why dont we just implement a law where judges can choose to punish the criminal with the EXACT method they committed the crime?"
Because it's barbaric, medieval and just wrong. I hate to use a cliche, but it's true what they say: Two wrongs don't make it a right. Hanging a murderer doesn't bring back the dead. There's no point to it, there's no more justice done, just more blood on our hands.
Yeah, I wish I were doing Criminal Law like next Tuesday but I actually have to sit for Company law and you know my company is a piece of shit so I think I should go study. :) We had this module on theoretical conceptions of what the law should be (Legal Theory), and this dude Hart said that the law has nothing to do with morality, that the law exists to prevent people from killing each other, to keep order in society, things like that. I guess if you don't buy my bleeding heart argument, then if you go by Hart's theory, the law exists to prevent people from taking matters into their own hands and do the whole vigilante justice thing, 'cause if that happens, there'd be no end to it. So there's actually a practical function to the law, oh my god.
For the record, I don't think the law is compassionate. :)
Right, time to get myself confused over shares and creditors and whatever. How exciting.
By
Anonymous, At
December 1, 2006 at 3:29:00 PM GMT+8
Thks yal for yr opposing view.. I will forward it to M..
I was disturbed when I heard it come from M's mouth cos I did not expect it to come from a person I thought I know so well.. But I guess M is just fervent on meting out justice effectively.
I will bear in mind Hart's theory. But I think it will remain a theory indefinitely. Vendetta is not a human flaw that is so easy to eradicate.
By
S|M0nG, At
December 1, 2006 at 7:56:00 PM GMT+8
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