I agree that we can't base our criminal justice system on a single case--and this case shows us why.
Personally, there is no way that I can be objective about this Rafferty scumbag. There is no system of laws that will allow me, as a dad and as a human being, to impose any punishment on him that will be sufficient.
Death penalty? Too easy. Life in prison? Too cushy. Torture? Better, but he did worse than torture somebody. He killed a little girl.
Anything short of tying him up and leaving him alone with me, holding a claw hammer is not going to satisfy my personal sense of what's just here. And that's why my personal sense of justice is not going to work in this situation.
Our criminal justice system needs to develop ways of dealing with people like this that shows, fundamentally, that we are interested in justice in the abstract, not justice on the individual level--and that even the least deserving in our society receive trial fairness and humane treatment, to ensure that the law serves its function as the arbiter or orderly resolution of disputes and general maintenance of social order.
Because if it were up to me? I'm a dad--and I have a little girl--so I'd kill him. Slowly. PAINFULLY. Nothing else could ever seem just to me. But that path leads to anarchy.
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