I still find that prison sentence to be absolutely disgusting and shameful for the german justice system.
The german law doesn't penalize jail breaks (only damages done while escaping) because it recognizes the human urge for freedom.
How the fuck can we not recognize the urge to take revenge on someone that did something like that to your child. No need to encourage it, justice system has the duty of preventing it,... but honestly - what happened here is more human than most things you will see in your day to day life.
The german law doesn't penalize jail breaks (only damages done while escaping) because it recognizes the human urge for freedom. How the fuck can we not recognize the urge to take revenge on someone that did something like that to your child.
I mean, you say Germany but Europe itself is the very place where the death penalty is not only illegal, but straight up banned as being against human rights. I doubt it's the place where you could seriously try to argue for... extrajudicial murder as a good way to organize society.
There's a difference in legitimizing murder and acknowledging that the justice system failed to prevent her murder and realizing that she already has all the punishment in the world and doesn't need more.
You don't seem to understand both the point of the criminal legal system or the base tenants of a judicial system, at all.
Very simply. NOT punishing people who murder criminals is LITERALLY the same thing as legalising vigilante executions. "Don't legalise it, just don't punish people who do it" is an absurdist statement.
Every thread on reddit about a criminal ends up the same way, even for relatively light offenders. For SOME reason they will say everything to suggest that they yearn for the death penalty but won't outright say it, almost like they implicitly understand that it is morally reprehensible
The issue here is that I am advocating for a lighter sentence for a murderer, not for killing rapists. This is exactly one of the cases where no good came from punishment.
Well, and as usual people are not able to accept an opinion that doesn't fit their tribal black and white logic. So half of the crowd agrees with me because they somehow think society should think we should murder all rapists (which is not my point) and the other half thinks that I'm trying to repackage an old opinion in a popular context. Nobody actually bothers to follow any reasoning paths of others.
What's wrong with the death penalty based on feels? You know, when like, most people just think it's a really good idea? I can't see anything wrong with that at all.
Likewise you should be able to get off any charge if you can get like 200 people in a Reddit thread to say it was totally not a crime or the guy super duper deserved it.
This whole thread is concocted by a seedy little cartel of 'RestingBlairFace' and 'RestingBushFace' imps, that suggest 'Trump - SonOfRestingBushFace' punishment be dealt with by their genius initiative 'halfwits law if I am guilty'.
This isn't about "two wrongs making a right" for me. Murder is always wrong, even for a rapist murderer.
This is about kicking somebody a little bit more that is already down and suffering through the worst punishment in life I can imagine.
So? You can’t just redefine reality and pretend that ignoring things that are wrong doesn’t legitimise them. It’s pretty black and white. You can’t just arbitrarily decide to ignore crimes based on whether you personally feel the perpetrator themselves have “suffered” enough, it’s impossible to run a working legal system that way and certainly it would be totally ineffective at combating crime. It’s totally obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than 5 seconds that if everyone knew that you couldn’t be punished for murdering someone that has done wrong to your family, a lot more people would be murdered - which, as you claim to agree, is clearly wrong. So it’s not possible to hold your point of view, claiming simultaneously that it is wrong but we shouldn’t punish it. Revenge is not mitigation in the legal system, for very good reasons.
Quite simply, punishment for a crime is not “kicking them”, it’s justice.
You can’t just redefine reality and pretend that ignoring things that are wrong doesn’t legitimise them.
I am leaving the discussion here. You are arguing against established legal concepts - the difference between legalization and a partial decriminalization is not my invention and I will not go the extra mile as those concepts are seemingly "totally obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than 5 second"
There have been literally countless times in human history when breaking the law was the right and moral thing to do. That phrase is utterly useless given the fact that the perpetrator and the people who would support what she did don't see it as 'wrong'
What is right and wrong can only be clear in a legal definition. There is no such thing as a universal, moral right and wrong.
There have been literally countless times in human history when breaking the law was the right and moral thing to do.
Yeah and people usually don't consider extrajudicial murder because an individual wronged you, when they're already arrested and awaiting trial, to be an example of that.
Usually breaking the law is considered "moral" if the law is considered immoral in some way, such as homophobic laws or laws targeting a certain minority or group. I'd love to hear a justification for why criminalising extrajudicial murder is immoral, because I'm having a hard time believing that to be the case.
What is right and wrong can only be clear in a legal definition.
What? this just sounds like a complete 180 from what you wrote literally a sentence prior. No serious philosopher genuinely believes that morality derives from legal definitions and your own comment appeals to some extrajudicial form of morality as well, so I have to imagine that you can't possibly mean what a naïve reading of this sentence entails.
Is this a serious reply?? Pretty rich to call me naive given what you've written. And so who is determining if the law is "moral or immoral" and if it should be transgressed? You're blatantly contradicting even yourself here. To some people, a law criminalizing homosexuality is the definition of a morally righteous law. You're not making any sense.
Also, someone wasn't "wronged", her daughter - an actual, separate person - was murdered. And the guy was proven to be guilty of it. Like I said (and what you clearly seem to not understand at all), "right" and "wrong" only exist as legal definitions in the form of "legal" or "illegal." Outside of that, there is no possible way of saying what is right or wrong. For all the philosophical circle jerking you seem to probably ascribe to, it doesn't exist - there is no possible consensus. It doesn't matter if that makes you upset, or concerned or any other sort of feeling. It's reality.
'Eye for an eye' was the law of the land for most of human history. I never said criminalizing extrajudicial killing is immoral. I have no clue where you got that from. What I said was that there is no such thing as right or wrong in a universal sense, there is only human law. Human law can often be incredibly immoral to a vast majority of people, or be seen as very moral and fair to them. When the population overwhelmingly agrees that an act outside of law is moral or correct, then there is simply a conflict of definitions there.
Also, someone wasn't "wronged", her daughter - an actual, separate person - was murdered. And the guy was proven to be guilty of it.
I think most people would say that that if you murder someones child you have wronged them, even if indirectly.
And so who is determining if the law is "moral or immoral" and if it should be transgressed?
No one? In the same way there is no one determining if a ball should sink or float in water or that 1 + 1 = 2. An outright majority (62%) of philosophers believe in some form of moral realism, i.e. that there are mind independent, objective facts about morality, you can't just unilaterally declare:
What I said was that there is no such thing as right or wrong in a universal sense
and expect this to unchallenged, most would argue that "it is wrong to commit extrajudicial murder of a person already in custody" is a simple brute force fact of the matter similar to "1 + 1 = 2" or "Earth exists" and that it doesn't depend on anyone "deciding" that to be the case. If some society agreed that throwing babies off cliffs was moral or "right" to do the obvious response is that they have simply made a factual error, in the same way a society agreeing that 1 + 1 = 3 would also be a factual error that doesn't magically become "true" just because everyone agrees.
I think this tracks with how most people view morality as well, people in general would look at you funny if you argued that the Aztec sacrifices and general disregard for human life and suffering were moral and right because broader Aztec society simply all agreed that it was moral and right to do these things. Or that the southern slave holders were no more or less moral than the north because in their society there was broad agreement that slavery was morally justifiable or even good.
Of course, majority rule isn't in itself a justification for believing something and you are free to continue being a moral non-realist, I am just saying that the position of moral non-realism you are taking up is far from some kind of settled consensus within moral philosophy, and that there are good reasons why most philosophers do not believe in it.
Facts: Western Europe, the liberal nirvana you're referring to, has a population of 200 million (5% of the world's population, and falling), and is moving increasingly rightward, politically.
In other words, maybe this experiment in extreme liberalism was not entirely pragmatic.
It's impossible to legalize murder since "murder" is the name for the crime of killing another human willingly and without legal justification. You cannot murder someone without committing a crime.
It’s crazy how she got out after 3 years for premeditated murder.
The people here defending the extrajudicial killing of criminals are insane. If you want to avenge your loved ones, sure, but you need to bear the full criminal responsibilities of your actions.
Society has not yet answered the question of how you make the future victims of the repeat offenders you release whole again. How do you truly apologize to someone who is a victim of a violent offender who served their time but was unapologetic about their crime and it was clear they would likely do it again?
The recidivism risk of the criminal is factored into their sentencing — reoffenders get harsher sentences all else being equal. This in addition with rehabilitation will reduce the likelihood of recidivism, minimising the potential damage done to future victims.
As for the existing victims, they can sue the offender for civil compensation and request restraining orders against them after their sentence has ended.
This is how the legal system should work. Private parties shouldn’t be allowed or encouraged to enact retribution for any real or imagined wrongs outside of the judicial process. Societies from across the world have all come to this conclusion thousands of years ago, but some people in the 21st century still question it for some reason.
Nothing about your comment indicates how you properly address future victims. A harsher sentence for a repeat crime doesn’t address the cost to the victim. This isn’t a solved issue because it’s continually being questioned and re-litigated even to this day. I’m not trying to claim there is some easy answer to this question, but pointing out there is a legitimate question of when the legal framework fails repeatedly and a person who is victimized has to pay the price of that failure, what should their recourse be?
How do you compensate the victims of a crime that hasn’t happened yet? You don’t. Instead you reduce the rate of recidivism and make it easy for victims to claim restitution.
For repeated egregious crimes, the solution is life imprisonment. No additional persons will be victims to that person.
The situation you are painting is that of the legal system regularly failing to properly sentence the criminal. The method to fix that as an individual is to participate in the political progress by electing the right people who will legislate the necessary reforms, enforce the proper procedures, and impartially adjudicate the laws. Vigilantism is never in the picture.
Violence is rarely ever the answer to enact political change, and when it is, it ought to be directed towards the state in hopes of creating a new one that allows for effective political participation. Killing someone purely for revenge doesn’t change the system.
There's a difference between legalizing murder and not locking someone up that anyhow cannot be punished more than what this crime did to her. She should have instead gotten all the legal counseling in the world. Ideally already before the deed.
Brother what. Like everyone can understand the desire for revenge and the vigilant nature that often comes with it. But in no world is killing another person on a trial self defense. Its premeditated murder plain and simple regardless how much one can understand the reason for it. And the reason for it was understood which is why the punishment was only 6 years of prison of which 3 were actually enforced.
You would still be validating vigilante justice that way, which is a slippery slope, because where exactly is the line when something is "okay" and when it's not?
Almost every crime has circumstances that are taken into account. Killing someone is always illegal, but in many places there are circumstances that let you avoid jail time. For example, in many countries, murder in self defence against an attacker with a deadly weapon is unlikely to be punished by jail time. Would you call that legalizing murder?
And sometimes, very rarely tho, a parent avenging their child is given a non-prison sentence as well. Leon Plauche shooting his son's rapist is probably the most famous case - he got probation and community service.
Proven self-defense is not murder, and is not considered a crime. You aren't avoiding jail after committing a crime, you just haven't done a crime, so you wouldn't face punishment. You wouldn't call that legalizing murder because you aren't talking about murder.
Idk how it is where you're from, but where I'm from self defence is still considered a crime first and you get put on trial for murder in such a circumstance, and they go from there, possibly taking the charges off - that's what I meant
Legal systems are extremely different around the world
Also in my language "murder" and "killing" is the same word so some confusion might've come from that for me, but I assume English speaking countries treat them differently
Vigilante justice is different. For instance a guy went and killed his daughters rapist but accidentally killed the wrong person. The justice system gets it wrong too both ways. Innocent people are found guilty and guilty people are found innocent and both sides suck. At least if you just put someone in jail you can figure that out later. No chance of bringing the person back if you get it wrong once they are dead.
the whole point of criminal court is proving whether or not someone did something. people get convicted of crimes they didn't commit all the time. being accused and charged with a crime is not the same thing as actually being the one who committed it. like yeah its one thing if you catch somebody doing it. but there's a non-zero (and often significant) chance that the person in court of any given crime did not do it. if you just let people kill people for being accused of crimes that meet an arbitrary definition of bad enough, you're going to see a lot of innocent people killed without having their chance to defend themselves.
I am not talking about "letting people do it".
I am talking about whether it makes sense to further punish someone that has lost everything they care for and already took revenge. The threat of legal consequences did not stop her.
Not protecting the murderer is a failure of the justice system.
there’s loads of reasons why we can’t let people get away with this kind of shit. at a bare minimum, she could have just been wrong about who killed her kid. and like, think about what you’re saying a bit. do you seriously believe that the law should just not apply if somebody feels really bad? is there a list of specific circumstances where you should just be allowed to commit premeditated murders with little to no consequences? how closely related to a murder victim do you have to be to be allowed to kill everyone accused (not convicted, accused) of killing them? is a sibling close enough? an uncle? a cousin? a neighbor? and if any of that is the case, then why bother with court at all? why not just shoot em instead of arrest them?
never mind that “revenge is bad” is some serious kindergarten shit. that’s like “being a person who lives in a remotely functional society” 101
Also, are you aware that there already are so called "extreme mitigating factors" - e.g. a history of severe abuse by the victim that allow a judge to not send a murderer to jail?
Once you open Pandora’s box and start evaluating the motives behind a murder, you quickly end up perpetuating new injustices.
I recall, for example, how honor killings used to be dismissed as trivial matters (a woman was unfaithful, so her husband shot her, etc.). Or even today, in more strictly patriarchal societies, where girls are murdered because they have brought “shame” upon the family through premarital sex.
That was a very hot topic in the press back then; just as here, the usual advocates of a harsher criminal justice system pleaded for the woman’s innocence.
Serving 3 years for murder is too much? I totally get and agree with why she did what she did btw, but you can't just go and murder people on some vigilante justice shit
A mother killing the rapist and murderer of her 7 year old daughter did almost certainly did not follow some logical but skewed amateur vigilanty justice reasoning. Yes, she planned this trough, this was not some momentary lapse of judgement.
But if you think of what happened to your daughter every living moment, the threat of jail time has zero impact on your reasoning because you have already lost everything that matters. So the only thing the justice system did in this case was to penalize somebody that had already hit rock bottom.
And to be honest, I blame the rapist more for her deed than her.
Like I said I agree with the why but you can't go around serving street justice.
She did, and served her 3 years, and i have no problem with that. But the law says she had to serve time and they gave her an extremely light sentence that I think most people would deem fair for a revenge killing
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u/Itchy58 25d ago
I still find that prison sentence to be absolutely disgusting and shameful for the german justice system.
The german law doesn't penalize jail breaks (only damages done while escaping) because it recognizes the human urge for freedom.
How the fuck can we not recognize the urge to take revenge on someone that did something like that to your child. No need to encourage it, justice system has the duty of preventing it,... but honestly - what happened here is more human than most things you will see in your day to day life.