[Tfong]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang

Now apply that logic to killing someone with your car. The courts have the ability to consider all factors and proceed accordingly. There is a massive difference between me killing someone while having a medical issue, a pedestrian that popped out into traffic, running someone down intentionally in road rage, drinking and driving, texting and not seeing a red light, etc.

The end result is that someone else is dead, and that sucks. But the law will be applied according to the contributing factors, not in a knee jerk fashion.

Apples to oranges, obviously, but let's not pretend that we'd like the law to be ignorantly black and white.

Yes and this goes into intent and severity. "Exceptions and conditions" as I basically refer to them as. If we remove these then people get the same punishment per damage done to victim regardless of intent and severity. I am fully aware that means sometimes people are put into prison or punished therefore without truly deserving it. But i maintain that the amount of people in this case hurt by this system of "black/white" is less than that of our current system.

Originally Posted by rubecube

Actually no, it's the difference between whether you believe the justice system benefits society better when operated under a punitive model vs a rehabilitative model.

This is where my view of the justice system usually clashes with others as I sit on the punitive model side versus our current "probability of rehabilitation" model.

Originally Posted by Makarov

Removing the concept of moral blameworthiness from our criminal law would be a truly radical departure. A purely consequence-focused criminal law would punish the person who negligently kills another person in a car accident exactly the same as a person who plans the deliberate killing of his wife.

Very few people would call that justice.

This goes back to my argument about exceptions and conditions in order to determine intent and maliciousness of an act. while there would be people that only deserve "manslaughter" punishment but instead get the same punishment as "first degree murder" I reason that this would protect society far better. Basically there would be no probability of "violent murder" reoffenses because the situation would never exist for a violent crime offender to have a chance at the situation again.

Yes I also agree that few would call that justice. Justice is however something we learn as children and growing up, so it is incredibly subject to interpretation. As such it's definition can be changed and adapted.