Nobody is hate-proof.

Regardless of your color, politics or sexual orientation. No matter what religion you do or don’t practice. Whatever your ethnicity or native language, level of education. City dweller, suburbanite or farmer. Somebody hates your guts because you exist. They don’t need to know anything about you personally. For whoever hates you, that you live is more than enough reason to want you dead.

Garry and I were watching an old episode of Law and Order tonight. The victim was a child murderer and pedophile, recently released from prison. In violation of his parole, he was living with a woman and two young children.

The murderer was this sleaze’s former social worker and therapist. She murdered him because she believed him to be a serious threat to society and specifically to the two children with whose mother he was living.

The jury refused to convict her even though she did it and never denied it. They liked her and felt she had done society a favor. I can certainly understand why they would feel that way. The victim was the dregs, the kind of criminal who gives criminals a bad name. Meanwhile the perpetrator was a highly intelligent, educated woman, on the side of the angels. Or maybe not.

The problem is obvious and of course that’s what the show was about. That’s what this post is about too. Where do we, as a society, draw the line? If it’s okay to be a vigilante in this case, what if the victim is homosexual and the killer believes homosexuality is an affront to God … and the jury is composed of fundamentalists who agree him? You can see where this is going, or for that matter, where it has been. Ugly, uglier, ugliest.

Does law become optional if there’s a general social agreement that a particular victim deserved what he or she got? What about if the police are sure they know who done it, but can’t prove it? Should they plant evidence to get a conviction?

There has to be a line in the sand. Because no matter who you are, somebody hates you enough to kill you for being you. Somewhere, there’s probably a whole village full of people who hate you enough to kill you. If we erase or smudge that line, no one will ever be safe. Not me, not you. No matter who you are. No matter where you live. No matter how righteous or harmless you are.

Somebody hates you and wants you dead.

Categories: #American-history, Crime and Cops, Legal Matters

Tags: crime, criminals, jury, Law, law and order, legal, police, police procedurals, postaday, victims, vigilante