Emotionally, I'm with MM, too. I catch you molesting a child --> I get to kill you.

But even just serving once on jury duty was enough to show me how completely fucked the system is, and I had a pretty strong emotional reaction to that too. There are good people in the justice system, and for the most part they are all trying to uncover the truth and render honest and fair verdicts, but there's so much room for error I don't even know where to begin. According to everything I've ever read about how the human brain and memory works, eyewitness testimony's just about the least reliable form of evidence ever. People make things up all the time and they don't even know it.

He's not claiming this is virtuous or fair, just what he wants.

Understood, particularly in the light of MM's own experience-which I'm very sorry to read about.

I'm not looking to further a kerfuffle. I simply worry about a system (and I'm not talking about MM's fantasy justice system) that relies on a demonstrably unachievable level of certitude.

And with that, I'm out of Bitches again for a while. If anyone wants to rant at me, I'm on email.

Okay, now I'm just confused. I was really enjoying this discussion, and didn't realize we were kerfuffling at all.

If anything I've said has upset anyone, I'm very sorry. We can stop talking about it.

My kerfuffle meter is very sensitive at the moment. I'm probably overreacting, Jessica.

I just don't come into Bitches very much anymore, and I didn't want anyone to think I was ignoring them if they took exception to what I wrote.

Okay, now I'm just confused. I was really enjoying this discussion, and didn't realize we were kerfuffling at all.

I really enjoy getting other people's opinions on sticky subjects like this. I realize mine's not the only opinion--nor the "right" one. People have interesting takes on their own individual experiences. I like to hear what people have to say.

Cash, I'm very much with you there. Sometimes, I don't even offer my own opinion because I'm too interested in the discourse that others are contributing to. I'm one of those people who is very wishy-washy. I can see both sides of the story so well, that I often have a hard time taking a firm stance of my own. I'll end up saying "what they said" to both sides and then people get pissy with me (I'm thinking my daughter here, no one on the board :).) In this instance, I'ma say "what Jessica said" because I've served on a jury, also, and I know how totally subjective the jury can be in its decision making. I was unprepared for that and found myself going along with the majority because I had no confidence that any of them would listen to what I had to say anymore than what they'd heard out in the courtroom. I do think we made the right decision, but for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn't quite a kerfuffle. It was more like a two-step. One step up on a hot issue, and one step back.

I still have no problem with the guy who kidnapped and raped the teenaed girl and cut off her arms being executed. Or the guy who kidnapped Polly Klaas. There's no doubt about their guilt in either instance, and they're evil, unfixable humans who committed cruel, sadistic and vicious crimes. The two guys who rode around in their vans and tortured women and taped it? Also should be very dead.

But there just aren't a whole lot of instances like that where you have obviously monstrous people who are unambiguously caught.

I'm working on my book pitch this weekend, along with going into work.

JZ being more virtuous, got up and out the door by 7:30 on a Saturday morning to go down to Perkins' house and get Julianna's room ready for her.

Has anyone else read James Alan Gardners' League of Peoples books?

In his 'verse, the League of Peoples is controlled by an alien cabal of beings so highly evolved that nobody knows anything about then, except that their requirement for sentience (and membership in the League) is that you, as a species, agree to stop killing other sentient beings. Anyone who commits murder is declared a "dangerous nonsentient" and dies instantly if they try to leave their planet. The humans in this universe are naturally suspicious of the League rulers, but nobody's ever caught them making a mistake, and anyway, it's still better to join them than have your entire species declared nonsentient.

Anyway, they're very good books.

The humans in this universe are naturally suspicious of the League rulers, but nobody's ever caught them making a mistake, and anyway, it's still better to join them than have your entire species declared nonsentient.

That's an interesting premise. The comic book Nexus had a more twisted presmise. An ancient, supremely powerful alien race gave one man horrible visions of evil murderers and the power to hunt them down and kill them. Sometimes these were tyrants and despots who were safe on their own planets. Sometimes savage kid psychopaths that Nexus would hunt down on the streets and kill in front of people who had no way of knowing the kid was evil.

The writer, Mike Baron, created the character starting from the notion "People like characters who kill. How can I justify that?"

Of course, later Nexus finally meets his last surviving alien power giver and finds out he's completely mad. Still 100% correct in finding killers, but insane.

That's what you get for trusting alien justice!

That's what you get for trusting alien justice!

Big Blue Justice = always better.

Intellectually, I think the death penalty is barbaric and wrong. Intellectually, I *want* to believe that no one is beyond rehabilitation. And the justice system is fucked in a big way. Our jails, as they exist now, are entirely non-conducive to rehabilitation. Want to make a criminal even worse? Throw him in jail.

That said, I'm also incredibly vengeful, and if anyone I loved were raped or murdered, I'd go vigilante and kill the fucker myself.

So. I'm a bundle of contradictions.

Oh, and also -- anyone who misuses quotation marks and apostrophes gets whacked, too. Because that's the only way people will learn.