Skip to main content

Causing the Fight

Carl Lee Hailey murdered two white men who gang raped his ten-year-old daughter, and was acquitted from the said crime by the jury despite his obvious guilt. This was the story of a responsible father turned vigilante killer in John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill.”

Just like the reasons of the acquittal of Hailey, the vigilante killers and their supporters believe in putting justice in their own hands; that a crime is justified on the victim’s criminal record.

But what do we call these people who are solving crime through crime? Isn’t the definition of the word criminal, someone who is guilty of a crime? Isn’t the murder of a person a crime? If the answer to these questions is yes, then vigilante killers are criminals.

It was said that even implementors of the law tolerate and accept vigilante killing as a means of eradicating criminals. Many ordinary citizens are slowly approving the idea. No one knows, maybe tomorrow, vigilante killing will be legal.

St. Thomas Aquinas’ validity of laws depended on his proposed hierarchy which put the Eternal Law (supreme will of God) on top, the Natural Law (part of Eternal Law imparted to human beings) at second, Divine Law (the Bible) at third, and the Human Law at the bottom. This meant that a law could only be valid if it doesn’t contradict the laws on top of the hierarchy.
So even if vigilante killing is legal – or at least, legal in the eyes of its supporters – it is definitely an invalid law. We all know that one of the laws stated in the Ten Commandments is the prohibition of murder, the indication of a person’s natural right to live. Isn’t this a good enough reason to put vigilante killing out of the scenario?

We have heard all of them despise the National People’s Army for demanding reform from the government through arms, or the rebellious Moro National Liberation Front and Moro International Liberation Front, or even the Abu Sayyaf bandits. The vigilante killers are also like the rebel groups, fighting for a cause, but most often causing the fight

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Letter to Elisha Joelle Samarah

My Dearest Elisha, I promised myself that I would write about this day since the very first time I saw your cute tiny face at the Intensive Care Unit in the hospital where I delivered you. I told myself that I would chronicle the events so you would understand how great God is in your life and how you have come to be a miracle in your father and I's lives. However, I cannot tell you everything now for the story of how you came to be is too long for you to understand at the moment and too difficult for me to explain in writing. But, I'm going to try nonetheless, soon, little by little, and hopefully, the chronicles would be complete when you are old enough to comprehend. For now, let me just remember the sweetest yet the most difficult day of my life.  Your father and I did not expect you to come at that point in our lives. I, especially, wanted to achieve a lot of things and did not even think about settling down anytime soon. When I found out that I was pre...
3 comments
Read more

Romans 1 is Genesis 3 Explained

Hello again! This blog became dormant again and now it’s going to have a reboot. I know that the last time this blog had a reboot way back two years ago I promised to write more often. Sorry guys, I wasn’t able to follow through with this promise due to busyness and just simply the distractions of life. This time I’m not going to promise anymore but what I’m going to do for sure is to try to write more often. Though I know, the entries would only come if and only if I cannot fight the urge to write. So here you go, I’m writing again. For those who visited this blog for the very first time, let me tell you that this actually started back when I was still in college. Back then, it was a very personal space and the things that were shared here were very personal things. So, if you try to go through the archive, you might find some things that are quite immature and some thoughts that I may or may not necessarily believe right at this moment. This was the very reason why I decide...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dead to Sin

I have a confession to make. I sin.  That's hardly a surprise actually. All of us sin. However, the degree upon which we feel the shame and the guilt of sin vary from one person to another. Others feel a guilt so terrible that they condemn themselves while others feel sorry for what they have done but are able to shrug it off at the next moment. Probably for the most of us, we don't even realize that we have sinned.  I have learned nonetheless that there are some sins that you can easily avoid while there are others that make you struggle so hard you almost always want to give up. The sins that can be seen externally most often are the ones that are easy to overcome. But the sins that lurk in your heart -- the ones that other people wouldn't even know that you have (and most often than not you don't even know you have) -- are the ones that would make you think twice about your character. Then, one day, a thing or a person or a circumstance, causes that sin hi...
Post a Comment
Read more