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It troubles me that many otherwise decent and well-meaning people seem to favor a little vigilante justice under certain circumstances. But it scares the heck out of me when I come across an extremely intelligent and well-educated person who feels this way.
A case in point was a recent guest on Bill O'Reilly's popular primetime show on the Fox News Channel. Here we had a gentleman with a Ph.D. who seemed to approve of the brutal beating of a fleeing rape suspect by an angry mob.
To his credit, O'Reilly confronted this man about his apparent sanctioning of vigilante-style activity. Even O'Reilly, a stern law-and-order advocate, can see that tolerating any kind of vigilantism is a slippery slope toward a dangerous system of justice – one in which people are no longer presumed innocent until proven guilty.
In fact, when O'Reilly raised that very concern, his guest merely blew it off by stating that he "knew" the alleged rapist was guilty of raping several women and a child, and therefore his attackers had every right to chase him down and beat him with a stick even though he was unarmed.
Yeah, no need to waste time and money on a trial when you know for sure someone is guilty. Just round up a posse to take them out somewhere and beat the crap out of them, or even kill them if their crime is serious enough. If that kind of mentality doesn't scare you, then maybe you should consider moving to China, Iran, or North Korea.
But even some people who would never go along with the forfeiture of lawful trials in favor of street vigilantism still seem to be okay with a different type of vigilante justice – one performed by prison inmates. A disturbingly large number of people apparently wink at the notion of prison inmates brutalizing certain types of criminals.
This is unacceptable. Just as the courts must determine guilt, they must also be the sole determiners of how a guilty person's punishment will be meted out. When it is decided on and/or applied by anyone else, the result is nothing more than another form of dangerous vigilantism.
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