(video here.)
Your daughter just died, and all you can think about is bringing the killer to "justice"? What is justice? Is it really taking a person's life away for taking a person's life away? "You took mine so I take yours." I sometimes forget we live in a society where our justice system is based on childish rules of what is fair and what isn't. I feel for this woman, I really do. I hope the killer is found. But the passion that this woman shows in wanting to find the killer and put him to "justice" is not as far from the passion the killer probably displayed in killing that little girl. Her little girl died, so she wants nothing more to see him die--or at least put in prison the rest of his life. An eye for an eye, essentially.Justice, as we use it today, implies that someone is deserving of something because of something done to them. So by losing something we gain a privilege that is otherwise prohibited by law? An interesting Catch 22 shaded by a system of law. He kills her. So he should be brought to justice (sentenced to death, more than likely, depending on where the trial takes place) in the name of her newly appointed inherent right to avenge her daughter's death. But we are not held responsible for putting a man to death. Justice is justified revenge. Of course, no one looks at it in this way. In our society, justice and the justice system are "good" and "right". Are they really?
In the movie "Where the Wild Things Are", Max's sister does him wrong by not protecting him and comforting him when her friends destroy his snow fort; in response, Max ransacks her room and covers it in snow. Justice? Who wins? Our "justice system" is legal justification for Max fucking up his sister's room, only in this case other people would do it for him while he watches on. It is a childish law system, spruced up to the point where the words "justice" and "rights" are taken for granted.
This won't and probably can't change any time soon. But this attitude of a self-righteous sense of justice needs to change. That woman does not deserve "justice" for losing her daughter. She does not now gain the privilege and blessing of divine justice to see that man executed. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Mourn your daughter. Celebrate her life, short as it may have been. Our "justice system" will do what they can to find your killer and put him away, but don't make it your mission to find and destroy a man's life. What do you then become?
I would not expect her to show the compassion the killer did not show her daughter, but think about this: should the killer be caught, her compassion could influence the outcome of his life--show hatred and a sense of revenge ("justice") and he is executed, but show compassion and leniency and perhaps he gets life. A life taken, a life saved. Perhaps not a good person or one who will do good things, but a person nonetheless, a life nonetheless.
Where have we come to that people feel that someone deserves to die, where they fight for a person to be executed? When the DC snipers were caught years ago, people pushed for the trial to take place in Virginia rather than Maryland. Why? Because Virginia allows capital punishment and Maryland does not. How is this justice?
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