Ooooooh, yeah, OP. When a known rapist was even SPOTTED by the toher street people in Edmonton, they'd beat hm up and run him away. Of course, after telling everyone within earshot and yelling out loud to the rest of the world that this person was a rapist.


Most of my justice views when I am angry are not shared by the people around me unless they're angry for the same reason. It made me feel alone and like people found me to be a monster, no better or maybe even worse than the perpetrator, and that would compuound my rage.

2 problems with this:
1 - You can't reverse mistakes, and they do happen. If you execute someone and later discover they were in fact innocent, then you can't ever reverse things. However, if they're locked up in jail you can release them and give them compensation. Financial compensation will of course never truly make up for the loss of liberty, but it's at least better than killing someone who turned out to be innocent.

2 - Not all victims would be up to dealing out the punishment themselves. It is a legitimate function of the state to enforce the law itself and not place the burden of enforcing a punishment upon the victims of crime. Of course i'd be all for allowing victims to inflict their own punishment in a suitable way if the victim requests it, but otherwise it is completely legitimate for the state to have this task. Government is there (in theory anyway) to enforce human rights and contracts, and the law should be based on this purpose. If the government only evaluates the guilt or innocence of criminals but then passes on the punishment to private citizens then it is not doing its job correctly.

3 - It sounds like a silly cliche, but killing other people is generally NOT good for your mental health, even if the killing is completely justified. Although we might all have revenge fantasies about those who have wronged us i'd bet that few would be able to kill another human being and not suffer some form of trauma afterwards. Only a sociopath could do that. A professional executioner theoretically is trained and prepared emotionally, same as for soldiers in the military, a random crime victim is not and should not be placed in that position.

Otherwise there's nothing wrong ethically with executing a murderer or otherwise making them suffer, so long as you KNOW that they're guilty 100%. In reality it's never 100% and that is why loss of liberty (through prison) is theoretically the best punishment. Of course we all know that prisons can be pretty nasty places for reasons beyond mere loss of liberty, but it is the "least bad" option considering the possibility of innocence being proven later on.

Yes.  I think it is inherently wrong to break the law in most cases (with perhaps some debatable exceptions), and that seems to be an EXTREMELY unpopular opinion.   For example, I want to slap people who go on and on about how they've done nothing wrong when they get caught with drugs and are all indignant about the punishment because "there's nothing wrong with doing drugs"-- I disagree, doing drugs is illegal and you chose to do it anyway.  It may be bullshit and if you feel that way you should join the folks busting their asses to try and change the law, but that doesn't give you the RIGHT to just ignore the law.  *cute thousands of people thinking I am crazy*

This is a complex one.
Really, they're right - if they take drugs and only effect their own bodies and minds then it's hard to see the problem (other than stupidity - quite a lot of recreational drugs have very damaging effects on the body).
But that's depending on your definition of ethics.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that asks "what is the right thing to do?", and only one branch of ethics is morality (which taking drugs would not violate).
It can be argued that breaking the law and thus putting oneself at risk of prosecution is unethical despite it not being immoral for the simple reason that it's not a good idea and will cause harm to you through violating the law. Then there's also the question of someone expecting the protection of the law while violating it which is rather hard to justify.

I do agree though that it's incredibly stupid to commit an illegal act (of any kind) and later complain about being prosecuted when you knew you were committing an illegal act. We all have free will and can choose either to obey the law or to break it and thus risk prosecution, regardless of how just or unjust that law is.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/05...64158.html

Recent example of a man spending 30 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit. He was convicted based on his resemblance to a sketch, and convicted on some pretty shaky eyewitness testimony.

Apparently the record was a man who spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit.

This is a really interesting website for those who believe that the justice system is infallible enough to make killing those found guilty a good idea:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

More than 250 people exonerated based on DNA evidence since 1989.

How would you feel if someone you cared about was murdered? Probably angry enough to pull the switch on the convicted killer. And how much worse would you feel if 6 months later it turns out that the killer was actually framed by an overenthusiastic policeman or whoever?

If a person kills someone because they are under the influence and, being under the influence, don't know they're killing someone, then doing drugs might be bad and maybe should be illegal?

The fact they were on drugs is irrelevant to whether or not they have responsibility for their actions UNLESS somebody spiked them against their will because they make a concious decision to take that first pill or that first drink.

Yes, that's true, so therefore it would be reckless endangerment to take or sell or give drugs.