a public defender

Due to the knee jerk reaction to childmolesters, sex offender lists end up being very similar to the lists of doctors who give abortions listed on the internet. It does nothing but make people guilty of sex offenses targets.

This sickens me. Vigilanty justice is always unsettling. Onn the other hand, if the “FBI agent” was the parent of one of the victims of the men, as a parent, I would totall y understand it. Not condone it but get it.

If someone raped my three year old the only safe place for that man would be behind bars to protect him from this mother. I will kill anyone who hurts my children.

I realize I am moving the goal posts, but when I read that story, it was the first thing that popped into my head, that Mr. FBI was a family member of one of the murdered men’s victims.

So, if someone raped your child, you would do something that could possibly send you to prison for years, thus leaving your child wtihout her mother to care for her? How does that make you a good parent?

I’m with Mieke on that issue… if someone violated one of my children, knowing what I do about the “system,” I would seriously consider whacking the pervert… of course it would be temporary insanity or heat of passion or some such, and one of you outstanding defense attorneys could get me acquitted and feel better about it than if you had to defend the child molester I’d just killed.

I say all that only partly tongue in cheek. As I’ve said before, if you all are so outraged by this street justice, support stiffer (even mandatory) sentencing for these monsters. They’re getting killed because the system is not doing its job to 1) protect the public from these pervs, and 2) punish their crimes.

Good golly, I know you folks defend undesireables, but you can’t see that regular folks are repulsed by molesters and want them punished harshly? Time to take off the “lawyer” hat and get in touch with normal people.

Texas Public Defender,

I suspect you are not yet a parent.

What I mean is that despite my education and upper-middle class upbringing, the primal desire/ need to protect your child is overwhelming.

That’s my emotional response, intellectually I know the right thing to do would be to let “justice” be served, but man if I caught him in the act or could get my hands on him, I am fairly certain he’d be a dead man. I think there would be a reasonable arguement for heat of passion or insanity because I would in fact lose my mind if one of my babies was hurt or killed.

I am against the death penalty, but have no problem if Samantha Runion’s mother killed her five year old daughter’s torturer, rapist, murderer. None at all.

Also, I suspect you don’t have children.

You’re right about the visceral emotional response the overwhelming majority of the public feels toward pedophiles. That is, of course, a terrible basis for a system of justice.

But no one seems overly concerned about the concept of vigilante justice. This country has a long and shameful history of vigilante justice and mob violence, much of it directed at sex crimes (as a mask for racism). Are we headed that way again? Its a pretty scary thought.

I think its incumbent upon all of us who work in the justice system to condemn this kind of activity, regardless of how “normal” a response that might be for a grief stricken parent. To me, such conduct carries echoes of the occasional justifications of the 9/11 hijackers printed in some newspapers afterward.

So outraged parents who kill their kids’ molester are jihadists/terrorists? I don’t follow that “logic.” Your other red herring is the race card– the reality is the vast majority of these offenders are white and the vast majority of their victims are white. How is that like lynching black men for carrying on with grown white women?

Look, these few instances of “vigilante justice” pale in comparison to the scandal of molesters being put back into communities to reoffend. It’s fundamental that when government ceases to protect the citizens, the citizens will protect themselves.

Thoughtful points, all. What I cannot agree with is that this “vigilante justice” should be condoned. I can fully understand it and I would not be surprised if I felt similar emotions myself in a similar situation. However, there is a point when responsibility steps in. Is it a justification? We should leave that up to the justice system, for if you want to travel down the path of the rape/assault of one’s loved one as an excusable justification for the murder of another, I can very easily lead you down the path of economic depression as the justification for most of the petty crimes that we face on a daily basis.

But I won’t. Tom, as you’ve seen me say often times, I am not opposed to harsher sentences. What I would also like to go hand in hand with harsher sentences is an attempt at rehabilitation. After all, isn’t that what prisons were meant to be for?

True story, when my sister was attending GW University in DC in the late 90s, an old boyfriend, we’ll call him Brooding Poet, started stalking her. He was kicked out of school. It became so serious that she got a restraining order. When he violated the order within hours of being told about it, she called the police. They told her there was nothing they could do until he tried to hurt her. She was terrified. He was nuts and now a heroin addict. She begged the police to help her, they could not. She called my father in NY for help. We tried everything we could over the course of a week to help her, the university tried to help, they moved her into a secure high-rise nothing worked. He was determined.

We were all frantic and helpless. Finals week was quickly approaching, studying was becoming increasingly difficult; desperate to stop an escalating situation, with no help from the police (whom we, in this family, generally love) my father, a sweet little Dutchman, called in a favor. As executive working in NYC he had many business contacts within “the firm” aka the mafia and had employed a few of their wives. On the same day he made the call, some “friends” found Brooding Poet lingering near my sister’s new dorm, I never found out exactly what happened, I know that whatever they said to him in the dark alley behind the dorm was enough to convince Brooding Poet he should leave my sister alone, which he did.

You may disagree with the actions my father took, but no one in my family does. A parent will do anything to protect their children.

M

PS. Bad boy was arrested four months later for five armed bank robberies and sent to prison. Once he’s done with his sentence he’ll be deported back to his Arab nation.

Does the punishment ever fit the crime? Are people capable of redemption? How do you protect society from offenders? without over reacting. The instinct to protect your child is powerful
what if the abuser was your wife? husband? brother? would you be so quick to throw the book at her? I don’t have the answers I think people should pay for the crimes they commit especially if they hurt someone. You can’t say if it was someone you loved how you would react. Hopefully healing is possible, and the offenders can stop offending
and control their behavior

There seem to be two separate issues here; the first is that of justified use of (deadly)force to prevent the commission of a felony and the second is the premediated use of (deadly)force to seek revenge. Child molestation is a crime. Premeditated murder is also a crime. The pedophile and the murderer share the same cell as well they should. Parents who saddle the high horse of righteous revenge and call it “protecting the children” give me a stiff pain in the neck. If you don’t see it their way- well you must not have children (that’s supposed to shut you up- because you’re not on firm ground for discourse). Meanwhile, would I seek a remedy from a doctor having a heart attack? Why then would I seek justice from a victim? That’s why there is a system of law- imperfect though it is- where the people repsonsible for deciding punishment are not the victims or family of victims.
And then of course, if you condemn their bad act (even a theoretical one) you must be defending the child molesters (an equally effective tactic of villifying your opponent in order to get them to go away quietly). Meanwhile being neither a parent nor a child molester I would not, for anything, trade perverts for murderers if the equation was based on calling the murderer slightly better. That kind of justice is injustice.