What is justice? How is it really served? What is cruel and unusual punishment? In the society that we live in, we are "protected" by the Constitution. One of our many rights is that we are protected from cruel and unusual punishment. It is easier said than done. Many people actually face cruel and unusual punishment. Why? Because what one calls cruel and unusual may not necessarily cruel and unusual to the next person. For example, the electric chair and lethal injections are both cruel punishments. However, it is still practiced. So how is it fair? How can we be protected in a country that violates our "guaranteed" rights? An eye for an eye, for example, is not fair. In fact, it is hypocritical. I think that sentencing somebody to death row is not right. Killing somebody because of their crime does not make it fair. Honestly, it makes the person that kills the criminal a murderer as well.
Just like Victoria, we live in the same society. I do not think that her punishment was fair. I do believe that it was indeed cruel punishment. Victoria was not aware of what happened. Her memory was wiped clean. She gained sympathy from me when she woke up so confused. She seemed so helpless and afraid. Instantly, I wanted to help her find safety. Not to mention, I later found out that she was under her fiance's spell during the murder. The first thing that came to my mind was that maybe she was in a domestic violent relationship. Maybe he made her record it. If she was in her right mind, she might not have actually done it. We do not know the whole story. What if she was forced to do it?
Honestly, I think that the fair thing to do would have been to would to put her in jail.I feel that she was not the same person that helped murder the child. I do not think that she should have been tortured. It was simply inhumane. Secondly, we do not know the full story of her relationship. Lastly, she was a complete wreck when she saw pictures of the child. I think that she was already mentally regretting helping her fiance with the murder. It was eating her up on the inside. Jail time and rehabilitation would have been better for her in the long run. Consistently torturing her made things worse for her even though she could not remember what happened the time before.
5 comments:
I feel you are absolutely correct when you say that one person's cruel and unusual punishment could be different from another, which then leads us to question if the person who is delivering this punishment justified to do so?
You claim that "eye for an eye" punishment is not fair, and I'm not sure that is the case. Surely, eye for an eye is strictly the fairest way to deal with crime. It's hard to argue that any given punishment would be unfair since the criminal is having it done to him/her exactly how the criminal originally did it to his/her victim. Is a punishment really "cruel and unusual" is the person that is receiving it has done the exact same thing to an innocent person?
You make some good points about the fact that we do not know all of the details about the relationship between Victoria and her fiancé. The fact that her defense of coercion played almost no part in determining her final punishment points to a system that is broken and unjust.
I liked how you mentioned that unfair treatment is different from one person to the next. This is quite true, but the question here would be how does one address this issue? Do we create a standard, or allow the person to choose for themselves?
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