I don't believe in vigilante justice. Particularly not in a situation such as this one, for the following reasons:
1) Hot pursuit. There was no way this man had time to trigger anything with policemen breathing down his neck. 2) When he was captured, they grabbed him and had him prone. He would not have been able to trigger the explosive with several plainclothes policemen holding him down.
And even if I did believe that any man should be shot to death without a fair trial, is it remotely fair to subject a bunch of innocent public transport passengers to that sort of situation? Please recall that they shot this man in the middle of a crowded Tube carriage. If anything had gone wrong, there could have been injured or killed civilians. Even if the victim was prone and unable to defend himself and push the gun away (read: towards a bystander) before a fatal shot was fired, discharging a firearm in an enclosed space is a bad idea; that can do permanent damage to eardrums. And while thankfully no one but the terrorist in question was hurt physically, some of the passengers involved are going to bear the scars of that little bit of public vigilante justice for the rest of their lives.
I still believe in a fair trial, all major evidence presented before judgement is passed, and not subjecting innocents to vigilante justice, which our legal system has been put in place to prevent. If the police force is willing to storm into crammed public transport carriages and dispense an incredibly fearsome form of vigilante justice without any thought about the mental well-being of the people they are sworn to protect, and if they count life so cheap that they will subject someone to a nasty, violent death in a public place as some kind of object lesson, what makes them better than the terrorists?
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2005-07-22 05:01 pm (UTC)1) Hot pursuit. There was no way this man had time to trigger anything with policemen breathing down his neck.
2) When he was captured, they grabbed him and had him prone. He would not have been able to trigger the explosive with several plainclothes policemen holding him down.
And even if I did believe that any man should be shot to death without a fair trial, is it remotely fair to subject a bunch of innocent public transport passengers to that sort of situation? Please recall that they shot this man in the middle of a crowded Tube carriage. If anything had gone wrong, there could have been injured or killed civilians. Even if the victim was prone and unable to defend himself and push the gun away (read: towards a bystander) before a fatal shot was fired, discharging a firearm in an enclosed space is a bad idea; that can do permanent damage to eardrums. And while thankfully no one but the terrorist in question was hurt physically, some of the passengers involved are going to bear the scars of that little bit of public vigilante justice for the rest of their lives.
I still believe in a fair trial, all major evidence presented before judgement is passed, and not subjecting innocents to vigilante justice, which our legal system has been put in place to prevent. If the police force is willing to storm into crammed public transport carriages and dispense an incredibly fearsome form of vigilante justice without any thought about the mental well-being of the people they are sworn to protect, and if they count life so cheap that they will subject someone to a nasty, violent death in a public place as some kind of object lesson, what makes them better than the terrorists?