So you are yet another one who doesn’t believe that people are innocent until proven guilty?
So are you presuming that mom lied?
I don’t think you should put it that way. No one is accusing the mother of anything.
The way our legal system works is that you are completely, 100% innocent until that jury says, “Guilty.” You could be covered hear-to-toe with the victim’s DNA, caught on tape, and have hundreds of witnesses against you, but you’re still treated as innocent until the law has deemed you otherwise.
Thus, the man who was beaten in this story can not legally be called a rapist-- he was never found to be one in a court of law. (That’s why news people are always careful to say “alleged” until a conviction-- anything else is slander.)
You know, if my mother told me that a man had raped her, I’d believe her. “Alleged” is legalese.
Sure you would, because you’re a loving son. The flip side of the coin, however, is that the alleged rapist probably would have told his mom he didn’t do it, and she would have believed him. That’s the thing about family-- we trust those whom we love.
Not at all. I posed the question because I was curious if people thought that killing could be justified. Because that was my intent I was assuming that the information we have if true. You could argue that what he did was wrong because he didn’t know that this guy raped his mother, but like I said before, if we’re going to doubt everything and everything about this, then what can we really discuss?
From the BBC it seems that the sentence took into account the possibility of mum lying:
**Judge Richard Tucker gave Bick, who was 16 at the time of the incident, credit for his guilty plea but said a non-custodial sentence would be inappropriate.
"I accept that, at the age of 16, you were acting on the basis of assertions made by your mother in the mistaken belief you could resolve matters.
“However, violence can never be justified as a means of resolving such matters.” **
and for supreme irony:
**Prosecutor Stephen Lineham QC said Bick was aggressive and was angry.
“The deceased, unwisely in the circumstances, taunted the defendant saying, in effect, that he didn’t have the nerve or the courage to hit him with the bat.”**
I completely disagree. Because that’s precisely the main issue, here. Apart from random and unfit punishment, the reason why vigilantism is a bad idea is that it can be easily done on the basis of lies, or mere rumors or suspicions. If we assume as a given that the guy was actually guilty, and the boy couldn’t be mistaken in any way (for instance he had personnally seen his mother being raped), the moral issue would be significantly different.
At this point, I see no evidences that a rape was actually commited. The only clear crime is the manslaughter.
If vigilantes are punished too lightly, you’ll end up with murders each time the local public opinion, or the family, suspect that someone commited some crime. Even courts sentence people who are latter proven innocent. If a “she told me he raped her” were a “exit jail free” card, the body count would be horrendous.
If the punishment was “1000 fine for cleanup purposes, and 30 days community service" as ** Parental advisory ** suggests, not only people wouldn't hesitate to kill on mere suspicions, but some would lie just in order to have someone else killed by their relatives or neighbors. Without risk. Or would kill themselves the neighbor who irritated them by parking in the wrong spot and allege later "that was because he raped me. Here are the 1000 ”.
Excusing vigilantism is opening a very ugly can of worms.
It would also be a de facto death penalty without due process. If our society isn’t willing to impose the death penalty for rape, I don’t think we should be willing to let lynch mobs do it for us.
Amendment - is he presuming that both Mom and the rapist lied?
Innocent until proven guilty is one thing, but last I heard confessions not made under duress and eye-witness identification were both considered evidence of guilt.
There is a mechanism to prosecute rapists. Obviously, the woman and her son knew who the alleged rapist was and where he could be found. They should have gone to the police in the first place and let them handle it. The son’s punishment is entirely justified, particularly on the basis of being a macho idiot.
For those who so enthusiastically claim they’d do the same thing if given the chance, I’m curious why you think that carrying out an act that is likely to get yourselves thrown in jail for a lengthy period would be preferable to letting the court system do its work. Because you really would enjoy having the chance to seriously hurt someone, as long as you can justify it in your own minds, right?
No, I’m not assuming anything whatsoever. But I am open to the possibility that the mother may have lied to the son for any one of a number of reasons, and then the son lied to the police about the confession thinking that it might exonerate him. He was willing to kill in cold blood, so I’d say there’s a slight chance he was willing to lie about it.
I think it’s more likely that they believe that the rapist deserves worse than what the legal system will do to them.
So we have two issues here.
1-Is taking the law into your own hands permissible?
2-Is the killing of a human being ever justified?
It seems that most everyone agrees that the first isn’t the best idea, except perhaps after the legal system has failed. That wasn’t the case in this situation though since it was never brought into the situation. It seems that people are split about the second issue.
Saying vigilantly ‘justice’ is automatically ‘wrong’ is saying that man(kind) is the ultimate authority. I am not ready to concede that - in light that there is a God (cite comes a few seconds after you die or double your money back). Civil authority in a democracy is just group think and is not always correct.
You are ultimately responsible for your actions, and be sure you kill the right guy however.
You mean like our entire criminal justice system?
Try the following experiment: (P.S. Don’t really try the following experiment)
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Commit a crime (make it a felony) in broad daylight with lots of witnesses. Setup a video camera to tape the whole event.
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When the police show up, just ask them to tell you when the trial will be. After all, you are innocent until proven guilty (in a court of law), and why would they possibly want to take you in and hold you until the trial? (Or make you put down scads of money.) You are innocent!
And here’s an alternate project for you-take a basic civics course to learn what is meant in our current legal system by “innocent until proven guilty.”
You mean ‘due process’, right? After all, ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ is just some sort of slogan we use; ‘due process’ is a what is actually in the Constitution. Under ‘due process’, we put oodles of people in jail every day before their trials. If people were literally ‘innocent’ until proven ‘guilty’, we probably wouldn’t be doing that, would we?
It is understood to be a proper extension of due process, as pointed out here.
Sorry-I hit submit too soon. I mean to add that further explanation on the meaning and origin of the phrase can be found here , where it is spelled out by Justice White in Coffin v. U.S.