vigilante justice?

[file cabinet]

http://www.freep.com/news/locoak/spat6_20020806.htm

after reading that.. if you live in America, doesn't it make you feel like we should be doing some vigilante justice against the government?

[Hypnos]

Vigilante justice is great, as long as I am the only one dispensing it.

[Melody]

:thumbup:

[Claverhouse]

These people are as vile and disgusting as the person they were 'punishing'. I'd hang the lot of them and all the other sadists using 'righteous indignation crap' to act out their fantasies.



Claverhouse :ph34r:

[Melody]

:thumbup:

[boppa]

Hi. I'm new in town (an NCent refugee), so please forgive me if this topic has already been done to death here.

I'm interested in thoughts on vigilantism, in all it's forms, which would include:
- the obvious: rough justice punishment dispensed by victims/supporters;
- the covert: prejudiced, deliberate marginalisation/exclusion;
- the overt: making public accusations, e.g. outing (sexual preference) of prominant persons;
- parental: dealing with the misdemeanors of minors, directly or indirectly, via parents, school discipline, reporting to authorities, etc;

I'm most particularly interested in the rationalisations behind your opinions, including when it would/wouldn't be appropriate, and if it can ever be justified? If you would add your mbti type to your message, it may be interesting to see if patterns emerge....

[NoahFence]

I have always dreamed about doing some vigilante hacking and digging up Bush/Cheney's private memos to be published worldwide in mere seconds via this lovely tool, teh internets.

Sadly, my sk1llz are far from 1337. :cry:

[raincrow007]

http://www.freep.com/news/locoak/spat6_20020806.htm

after reading that.. if you live in America, doesn't it make you feel like we should be doing some vigilante justice against the government?

I feel like dishing out some vigilante justice to that seemingly no longer valid link.

[Claverhouse]

Seeing your pain, I went back to find it on the Wayback Machine
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.freep.com/news/locoak/spat6_20020806.htm
and guessed it to be the 3rd June 2004. (http://web.archive.org/web/20040603165402/http://www.freep.com/news/locoak/spat6_20020806.htm) I'd forgotten the thing. But I still think I was right.

:ph34r:

In case it goes again, I'll copy it all here:


Vigilante neighbors in court for branding molester


August 6, 2002



BY L.L. BRASIER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Three Pontiac men took the law -- and a blistering hot metal spatula -- into their hands when they learned a neighbor had been regularly sodomizing his 7- and 10-year-old nephews.
Two of the men held down the uncle while the third pressed the smoking spatula on his genitals, buttocks, stomach and legs. They paused only long enough to reheat the spatula on the kitchen stove for repeated branding before tossing the uncle out onto the sidewalk, breaking his arm.
The three men -- Billy Hatten, Dewon Williams and Randolph Evans -- were calm and coolly matter-of-fact Monday in Oakland County Circuit Court as they described their deeds in pleading guilty to the attack.
As their statements continued, several courtroom spectators started nodding their heads in seeming approval.
Criminal justice experts are not surprised by the reaction. Citizens, frightened and angered by recent high-profile crimes against children, are more likely to give tacit approval to the rough justice dealt outside a courthouse, they say.
The three men admitted in court Monday that they attacked neighbor Phillip Gibson in his Pontiac home Nov. 11, 2000, after the boys' weeping mother asked them for help. They said she told them her children had just accused Gibson -- their uncle -- of abusing them.
Hatten, who wielded the spatula, is a family friend who has known the children since birth.
He pleaded guilty to assault with intent to do great bodily harm and is to be sentenced to 18 months in prison by Judge Nanci Grant on Sept. 3.
His attorney, Amy Bowen-Krane, said that Hatten, 41, was an unsophisticated 10th-grade dropout who thought going after Gibson was the right thing.
"It was an emotional gut reaction," she said. "He had known these children all of their lives. Anybody who is a parent can understand this -- not condone it, but understand it."
Gibson was hospitalized for three weeks with first-, second- and third-degree burns.
In June 2001, Gibson, 38, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct for the attacks on his nephews and was ordered to serve an 8- to 40-year prison term.
Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Ken Frazee said that no crime, even horrific assaults on children, merits vigilante justice.
"I don't condone what the victim did," Frazee said, after Gibson's attackers were led away. "It was repulsive. But he was punished at the hands of these defendants -- tortured -- and the law does not allow for that."
Evans, 37, who admitted holding Gibson down so he could be burned, also pleaded guilty to assault with intent to do great bodily harm. He faces a 19-month prison term under a plea agreement at his Aug. 28 sentencing.
Williams, who admitted throwing Gibson on the sidewalk, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. Already serving alife sentence for murder in an unrelated case, Williams, 21, faces a year in prison for the assault. The Pontiac branding is part of what appears to be an increased level of vigilante actions, criminal justice experts said Monday. And with each additional and infuriating report of a kidnapped and murdered child or a raped teenager, Americans are more likely to be sympathetic to private citizens ready to act out their rage.
"Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't kill him," said Carl Taylor, a criminologist at Michigan State University who studies crime in urban settings.
Taylor said that child rape is so taboo that citizens, particularly those in communities that are traditionally suspicious of the criminal justice system, will sometimes act out on their own.
"We call it street law, or street justice," he said. "And it's actually quite common when you have cases of child abuse."
The nods of seeming approval for the three men did not surprise James Alan Fox, a professor in the college of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston.
"More people are likely to cheer than condemn vigilantes," Fox said. "They turn them into folk heros, even when what they've done is not heroic."
Fox said he has seen a shift toward more vigilante activity in the last 10 years as people grow increasingly disenchanted with a criminal justice system they think does not work. It is a perception perpetrated by high-profile news reports of repeat offenders who commit new crimes, he said.
"What you have is more media outlets seeking out and commenting on failures of the justice system, so you have the notion that it doesn't work," Fox said.
"Americans appear much more willing to take matters into their hands, either by taking a greater role in protecting themselves, or by . . . going after the bad guys," he said.
"That is not a good thing, because often the punishment is much harsher, more brutal, than what is appropriate," Fox said. "That's why we have laws, a system, to handle crime and punishment."



Contact L.L. BRASIER at 248-858-2262 or at brasier@freepress.com.



Claverhouse :ph34r:

[cryingmime]

http://www.freep.com/news/locoak/spat6_20020806.htm
after reading that.. if you live in America, doesn't it make you feel like we should be doing some vigilante justice against the government?
After reading that, i feel like doing some vigilante justice against the Detroit Free Press for their boring 404 page.

r

[cryingmime]

Damn, you beat me to it!
i should read other posts before i post.

[raincrow007]

Thanks, Claverhouse.

[ShadyShady]

Vigilante justice for child abusers? You are on the wrong forum. These people are voting to give children to abusers.

http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=12618

http://www.thesignsofthetimes.net/images/ygth-small.gif

[cryingmime]

Would you rather have some animated gif's and marquee text?
OP: Kudos to the vigilantes.

no, but i like entertaining 404's. like these.

http://www.plinko.net/404/

r

[cafe]

I am not going to say what they did was right, but I am surprised that in cases like that it doesn't happen any more than it does. I don't *think* I would torture someone who raped my child, but if justice wasn't done, I might kill them.

[Claverhouse]

Killing is fine. Torture is out.


Claverhouse :ph34r:

[GhostOfTheChameleon]

If someone raped my child, I wouldn't hesitate to torture them.

An eye for an eye means the bad guys go blind after just two atrocities.

-dp

[Purple-Silver Fox]

If someone raped my child, I wouldn't hesitate to torture them.

An eye for an eye means the bad guys go blind after just two atrocities.

-dpAs long as you don't think it will deter potential criminals. After all, they don't think about the consequences of their deeds; that's why they're criminals.

[raincrow007]

*patiently waits for nuclear winter*

All people suck.

[SeierTapt]

The vigilantes are idiots, and so is the molester. They all deserve the jail time they got.

[panda]

Vigilante justice for child abusers? You are on the wrong forum. These people are voting to give children to abusers.

http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=12618

http://www.thesignsofthetimes.net/images/ygth-small.gif
Yeah, because homosexual = child abuser. :rolleyes2

I know you like to pretend otherwise, but you're smarter than that.

[Claverhouse]

Apart from the fact that they were not incensed relatives of the abused children, which means they couldn't claim all the parental bit; I liked this


His attorney, Amy Bowen-Krane, said that Hatten, 41, was an unsophisticated 10th-grade dropout who thought going after Gibson was the right thing.
"It was an emotional gut reaction," she said. "He had known these children all of their lives. Anybody who is a parent can understand this -- not condone it, but understand it."

In one of P. C. Wren's novels there's a jibe at the florid French advocates of the past, 'How can my client be condemned ? Which of you would not have been the first to throw the baby out of the window ?'

Obviously the tradition has travelled.


Claverhouse :ph34r:

[Sackanaka]

I do the vigilante thing while I'm lucid dreaming. I know some people don't believe in this, but I have astral traveled to other countries in my dreams, and if I notice terrorist activity, I even beat up the perpetrators, robbers, or terrorists that I found in my dream that are up to something. In a London subway in my dreams, I overheard a group of three young men, saying what they were going to do to this subway, and noted that their bags had either said Essex or Sussex, so I knew they lived in London and had an apartment there. This was prior to the bombing on the london subways, and I suspect it may have been the same people. I think they were caught in real life. Anyway, I really do beat up these thugs in my dreams. And I have no idea if they are really getting black and blue in real life, I really wonder if they wake up feeling it.
:thumbup:

[Purple-Silver Fox]

:wtf: No, of course not, those criminals are nothing but brainless animals.

Seriously, it's not that they don't think about the consequences, it's that the immediate benefits of the act outweigh the risk of getting caught and punished. Trust me, I'm a criminal (though certainly not a pedophile).
They're not really making a cost-benefit analysis. They assume they won't get caught, so deterrence doesn't work, only when it's almost certain to get caught and punished.

[xavierd]

They should have just killed the SOB but then they would probably be in jail longer. The main reason we need courts is to be absolutely sure of the person in questions guilt. I have no problem with this kind of justice as long as the person being accused actually did the crime and therefore I have no sympathy for the man since he apparently did the crime (he pleaded guilty).

[libertarianjim]

Fuck 'em. That's what I think.

[ShadyShady]

This guy needs some:

http://crimeblog.us/?p=19

He made up a fake religion and a fake school and used them to rape boys. Check out his websites...he mentions Jung, he was probably using MBTI too.

edit: the blog is about the guy you may have seen on the news recently: "“Man accused of sexually assaulting boys calls having sex with children a sacred ritual.”