Assumption of risk is a bogus argument. The prison is not designed to be a place where the prisoners have free reign over other prisoners. The prisoners are not sentenced to anarchy. There is supposed to be an idea of reform, rehabilitation, and lawful punishment.
Let me put it this way: how we care for and treat the prisoners says nothing about their humanity or inhumanity; it says everything about ours.
Assumption of risk is not a bogus argument, though I will agree with you that prison is not designed to be a place where the prisoners have free reign over the other prisoners. I’ll even agree that prison shouldn’t be a place where the prisoners have free reign over the other prisoners.
But every now and then shit happens. There are plenty of examples of prison riots, beatings, killings. The risk is real, even if it wasn’t designed.
Someone got sentenceed for yet another case of stuff happening. Vigilantes and their supporters should really be proud of the poor guy who was sentenced to life w/o parole. :rolleyes:
I don’t have a dog in this fight but these are two different situations and equating the two doesn’t show honest debating.
The great thing about our society is that our system of justice is memorialized in our legal system. This is ESPECIALLY true in the case of criminal laws, we recognize the difference between justice and revenge. As a society, as a “nation of laws” we exalt the law as objective and fair (what most people would call justice). We create laws in the cold light of reason not in the heat of passion and in doing so we take the time to consider the issues and arrive at the best policy we can.
If you do not like the results that the law provides, you must change the law, not ignore them. Have your congressman pass a law saying that inmates are allowed to tattoo confessed child molesters if you like. But whatever rule you want to implement you have to be happy to apply that rule objectively or not at all.
I think you miss the point. If we took every reasonable effort to protect this childmolester (and I suspect that we were actually complicit in his tattoo episode), he would still be subject to a greater risk merely by virtue of being in an environment of people who break the law and even moreso ebcause he is a child molester in a population of people who have a higher than average incidence of child molestation victims.
While I have trouble getting really worked up over this particular guy’s rights but we cannot condone the extralegal actions.
I like that quote from Thomas Moore, it reminds me of all my failures as a lawyer.
How in the world does the woman who claimed she was raped get away with all this. At the very least, her family should sue her for defamation (the damages would be the death of the victim) the police should charge her with something (inciting violence, negligent homocide, murder, etc.).
Hmmmm. Isn’t this all getting a bit heated over what is essentially a minor incident? I can’t imagine a jailhouse tat with pen ink is beyond the abilities of modern removal techniques, so it hardly counts as ‘maiming’. Painful, certainly. A risk of infection with Hepatitis or similar, quite possibly.
But in the grand scheme of things I’d put it on a par with a violent punch-up not requiring hospitalisation, and much less serious than the stabbings and so on that occur on a fairly regular basis without anyone paying much attention. It’s not like prisoners have ever been short of creative ways of punishing each other.
Not that it really matters, but my brother (who is in the Marines now) personally knew both of these guys, and was good friends with the Corporal who was killed.
Sure it does, if and note I say IF, the man who was killed had raped the woman, I don’t think it’s a far leap, to imagine some of our posters would consider that justice, too.
Unfortunately the Marine killed the wrong guy based on bad information, but his heart was in the right place.
Right?
Yes, unfortunately the Marine killed the wrong guy, a guy that never admitted to raping and killing a woman, but was still murdered. However, we are talking about a guy who DID admit to kidnapping, raping, and killing a little girl. There is a difference and this does not make for a good comparison in use of debate.
No there isn’t a difference. Either you believe that “justice” should trump the law or you don’t. Sure you can pick a nice easy case like this inmate and say, AHA! He’s an admitted bad guy. However I doubt the inmate that tattooed him, would’ve cared whether he (the rapist) had admitted to the crime or not.
He’s in prision, the inmate who was convicted of killing his cousin is there and IMO that would have been enough.
The same way the marine who killed the other. It didn’t matter whether the guy was guilty or not, it didn’t matter whether he admitted the crime or not… all that mattered was that he was doing “justice”.
In that way they are very similar…IMO.
I mean, children would never tell tall tales about their encounters with the next door neighbor on the starry nights, right? Right?
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Well sure if we accept the fact that this is based on nothing but your speculation.
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Hmm a guy kills someone accused of rape, another guy “tattoos” an admitted molester and rapists? Yep, that’s so alike.
What I’m questioning is the concept that’s been put forth, that “justice” should trump the law. Not the specific acts, but the motivation being the act…i.e doing what the law should’ve done. Whether it’s a tattoo, smashing a window or murder, is merely a matter of degree; but the motivation is the same.
So what are we talking about now? Are we discussing what happened or what could have happened, using examples that have nothing to do with the current case?
What is everyone missing here? A guy raped and killed a little girl. He admitted to it, no doubt about that, right? The guy says “Yes, I raped her. I killed her.” What else is there?
This is not a guy who was pending charges, with rumors going around that he might be the boogie man. The Guardian Angels on the streets of New York did not pull this guy aside and beat the shit out of him.
People who are arguing that it happend and the have no regrets that it happened are not justifying vigilante justice from what I have been reading. People are saying that this guy who put his dick in a little girl, and followed up by ending her life deserves every bad thing that happens to him.
They way you say this implies to me that you think the average American person finds that to be bad news. I wish I shared your view. This is warm fuzzy leftist pinko message board, and lots and lots of folks are saying “Yeah, baby!” to the possibility that incarcerated convicted felons are a reasonable choice to administer justice in our society.
We are a democracy, we get the government we deserve, and its all our own fault.
Tris
You are not a true intellectual, and cannot drink your mocha-latte-supreme with your pinky in the air, unless you froth yourself into a thick foam worrying about the rights of an admitted child killer who has had to weather a bit of karma which has come around to smack him in the forehead. That is what you missed.
I assume this is not really directed at me, or perhaps you are 100% right. Perhaps I am not an intellectual and refuse to feel bad for this guy. I have a beautiful 11 year old girl and 7 year old boy. I love them both with all of my heart and would hate to think that something like this could happen to them.
Whoosh.