Dealing with serious unprovoked physical attacks
July 11th, 2012 at 04:17am
An email to 2GB’s Andrew Moore
Good morning Andrew,
For obvious legal reasons I don’t want to talk specifically about the case of the kid who was king hit and killed in Kings Cross, but in general if people are found guilty of such a gutless and unprovoked offence, then I don’t think they are fit to be in society.
In my view, people who commit such types of crimes without provocation simply can not be rehabilitated and should either be locked away forever, or should be king hit by the relatives of the victim. There are some elements of an eye for an eye which I think are appropriate with people who commit this type of offence.
In some ways I wonder if the British had it right back in the day. Find an uninhabited land mass and send the “worst of the worst” there to fend for themselves.
Have a great day Andrew.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
Entry Filed under: Talkback Emails
2 Comments
1. frank83 | July 11th, 2012 at 9:12 am
“In my view, people who commit such types of crimes without provocation…should be king hit by the relatives of the victim.
In your view, Samuel, what if the perpetrator is convicted and “king hit by relatives of the victim” and subsequently found to be innocent? Is the newly exonerated man’s family allowed to “king hit” the relatives? Or should it be the judge who is king hit for their incorrect verdict? Or the jury?
Maybe the “king hit” should be reserved for the person who suggested such an ill conceived punishment.
2. Samuel | July 11th, 2012 at 11:00 am
That argument makes about as much sense as suggesting that under existing punishment regimes, if a person is convicted and sent to prison but is later exonerated, that the judge and/or jury should be imprisoned. Or equally silly would be an argument that some convicted people are innocent, so we shouldn’t imprison anyone just in case they’re innocent.
Remember that under our legal system, the requirement for a guilty verdict is that your guilt has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. This is a very high standard…it is not perfect, but it’s about as close as you can get, so it’s not unreasonable for harsh punishments to be based on such a verdict.
That said, perhaps I can offer this. We don’t have the death penalty here (I think we should, but that’s an argument for another day) but in most civilised places which do have it, they only enforce it after the convicted person has been given time to appeal, usually more than once. Perhaps my proposed punishment should require such a mechachnism of appeal before it is carried out.