a very emotive subject this. Apparantly the exact details of his breach of conditions is not (yet) being released, but this is maybe besides the point. When the details of their heinous crimes were first known I said to my other half that they actually looked "evil" and that I would simply kill them as to me there seemed no chance of redeeming themselves and the nature of the crime itself was so bad. Yes, I know all about how human beings can be conditioned into accepting and perpertrating all sorts of cruelties (you only have to read about any warcrimes here)but ,if it were your child as victim, what would your gut reaction be?And ,further, why would that be wrong exactly?Because it wouldnt be "civilized"?Because it would be a purely "emotive" response? Because it wouldnt be "lawful"?Perhaps because it still wouldnt "solve" anything or that it would be wrong to "take a life" regardless of the crime. To me, my gut reaction would still be right. I dont think I would lose any sleep over it. But what about the unthinkable?If it was a child of yours that had done the crime (coerced or whatever), would you still feel the same then, or would you like a chance of redemption for them. Does the inate gut feeling that makes us want to lash out and kill anyone who would torture and kill one of our own equally want to try and save our own offspring if they were guilty of it? Maybe we would like to say that no, they deserve to die too, but ,come to the crunch, would we search desperatly for evidence of conditioning/coercian, any mitigating circumstances? I personally believe that some people are weaker than others and that they can be forced into things under duress, I believe others lack a "moral compass" and can be swayed either way ....and I believe that some are mostly just evil so that their behaviour cannot be justified by conditioning or duress. These last can surely have no redemption.
sorry to rabbit on but it is a very emotive subject and for that reason alone I think we should try and look a bit closer at our feelings and our rationale behind it. :-/