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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 3582304" data-attributes="member: 22424">If you deny a fair trial to the monstrous criminal, then sooner or later the system is going to deny a fair trial to the man who looks like a monstrous criminal but is, in fact, guilty of no crime. I find that dangerous.I didn't mitigate the seriousness of the crime because I don't think it's relevant. As for the guilt of the suspect, I consider that to be automatically in doubt until the evidence has been presented.In the extreme case, I'm concerned about the identical twin of the serial killer. He looks, sounds and in mannerism and stance is just like the killer. Even the DNA evidence matches... but he's not the guilty party. That likely doesn't matter to the grieving father whose daughter was abused, but it's a crucial difference. (And, yes, I'm aware that reality never provides a real case so extreme. I'm using it for illustration only.)I'm also concerned about the vigilante who overreacts. At the moment, our societies don't consider child abuse to be a crime deserving the death sentence. That may well be wrong of us, but there it is. However, if you were the father of the child, would you not kill the man who did the deed? (Again, an extreme example, but you can step it back to a point where the vigilante's response is likely to be excessive given the details of the crime.)How about this: I take the view that we as a society cannot prevent the deaths of innocents at the hands of villains and madmen (since there's no shortage of those, and since we cannot detect them until they strike), but we CAN determine which lives we are responsible for taking. And the ultimate good, then, would be to minimise the innocent lives we ourselves are responsible for ending.Does that make my position clearer?(It would appear your mileage varies, and that you would take the view that it's better to see the deaths of the smallest number of innocents, regardless of who does the actual killing. Would that be fair? Either way, it's a valid position... but not one I agree with.)Indeed. I object to making that trade-off. Take it too far and it becomes a pure numbers game - if we determine that 90% of criminals come from a portion of society (let's say 5% of the whole) then it could be considered acceptable to just wipe out that portion to remove the problem. (Yet again, extreme example to illustrate a point.)See above. I would rather society not take more innocent lives than we absolutely must.There's yet another consideration: if we get it wrong and kill an innocent man for a crime he didn't commit then not only have we killed an innocent, but we have also failed to save any lives. In fact, we might well have made things more dangerous for the innocent, since the case is now closed and we're not on the lookout for the killer on the loose.</blockquote>

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