Because perhaps the rule of law does have a place in our society after all:
When the rather dreadful topic of child-molestation comes up on this board and in other facets of my life, a surprising number of otherwise seemingly sane and reasonable people seem to decide that the laws enacted by our shared sovereignty just aren’t swift or harsh enough for child molesters. In many cases people advocate, in all seriousness, that some form of vigilante justice should be enacted upon the supposed perpetrator.
Never mind that even the criminal justice system often manages to wrongly convict people of every possible stripe of crime, people seem to believe that their sense of rage and the disgusting nature of the act itself permits people to act as judge, jury, and (literally) executioner of the accused.
Well, it’s apparently backfired in a big way in this case.
A Fairfield, Connecticut attorney was told by his wife that his two year old was molested by a neighbor. Like any reasonable man (or JD presumably with at least some passing familiarity with the American system of criminal justice), he didn’t call the police, he broke through his neighbor’s window in the middle of the night and stabbed him to death.
Now, the Fairfield police are reporting that they’re confident that the girl was never molested by the neighbor.
Oooops.
I say that Mr. Edington should feel the full brunt of the criminal justice system for his premeditated murder of a neighbor. Particularly because, as a lawyer, he should have known better. This man’s entire living was based upon trust in the law’s ability to come to fair results through due process. He chose to ignore that process and simply kill a neighbor based upon an apparently groundless accusation.
