But people, who make unsubstantiated claims, want to string up innocent third parties, and provide dubious (to say the least) legal opinions, are indeed the epitome of intelligent discourse.
"But people, who make unsubstantiated claims, want to string up innocent third parties,..."
I see little difference in wrongful conviction and execution of innocent parties by the state and errant vigilante justice accomplishing the same end. As the earlier article pointed out, modern DNA testing is responsible for freeing many wrongfully convicted people from death row. We are left to wonder how many others could have benefited from this technology in years past.
This question is driven by our respect for human life, which we like to consider supremely valuable. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but we're not likely to change our minds now. Still, consider what makes a commodity valuable. Gold and jewels are considered valuable because of their scarcity. That principle holds true with everything else too. Want to buy a car? New ones are more expensive than used ones because the supply is limited. What then, is the most common thing on this planet? What one thing are we continually overrun with, having to make new and better facilities to accommodate it?
Human life.
My life is valuable to me and to a few relatives and friends. To the rest of the world it is a mere statistic. The same can be said of each and every one of us here on this board and of all the migrant laborers, legal and otherwise, who happen to get in the way of a bit of vigilante justice.
Six months ago, when the tsunami struck Indonesia, we in the United States leaped to send all sorts of disaster relief supplies to help the refugees. Our televisions and newspapers carried daily stories of miraculous survivals and horrible deaths. To a lesser degree, European countries contributed to the relief effort but Middle Eastern countries were conspicuous in their absence. Most notable though, was the almost complete interest shown by the Indonesian government. Their primary concern was getting our military out of their country. That they had to assume the relief effort to accomplish that was simply a price they had to pay.
Here in America we still have enough open land to allow us to assign a higher value to human life than to property. In countries that are overrun with people, such as is the case in many Asian countries, the opposite is true. If we continue with our "open borders" policy, supporting NAFTA and instituting CAFTA too, how long will it be before we begin sacrificing people to the 'God' of urban renewal? We already sacrifice their homes, using local government to declare the property essential to the good of the people as a whole.
In a county courthouse not far from here, the Sheriff has a small display case with relics from earlier years. One photo shows several men hanging from a railroad bridge. The caption tells of the problems local ranchers were having from cattle rustlers and how those problems went away after a group of vigilantes decorated the bridge. Vigilante justice reared its ugly but effective head when I was a child. In 1942 most of the deputies assigned to the Sheriff's department had enlisted in the army, leaving him woefully short-handed. A few miles away, a man was found sexually mistreating his own daughter and the Sheriff simply couldn't get to him. A group of local farmers visited him though and convinced him of the error of his ways. They did such a good job of convincing him that he hanged himself. The Sheriff came by to look into the matter and declare it a suicide, marveling at the determination of the dead man who somehow managed to hang himself with his hands tied behind him.
Justice is supposed to be meted out by peers of the accused. By the time the lawyers have chosen a jury though, none of the jurors have any resemblance to the accused and can in no way be considered peers. Vigilantes, on the other hand, are usually people from the area, perhaps even neighbors of the accused, and can rightly be considered peers. Will they make mistakes? Sure, but so does the state, and sometime those vigilantes can correct the state's errors.