Usually if someone has been trialed and found guilty, morally, people want to see that person punished. How many of us can admit that the thought of not every murderer being guilty or that every victim not being the innocent one has ever crossed our minds? Arguably the victim can also be seen as the guilty party, the victim could have provoked the perpetrator and as a result, the violence that does occur can end with someone getting hurt. We have all watched some kind of Hollywood movie, which includes one lawful abiding protagonist who “turns bad” after an innocent family member or close friend of theirs is wrongly murdered. Does this make the character that sets out for revenge on their “innocent” friend guilty? Or is it something we would all do if there were no consequences for our actions.
Questionably, violence can be seen as necessary when it comes to protecting yourself or a loved one that is in a particular vulnerable state and feels they are overpowered in the situation they are in. But the question always goes back to, how far can you really go in stopping someone that is being violent. How far does the other person have to go until they are stepping over the victim perpetrator boundary, when do these lines truly start to blur? Perhaps the boundary is blurred when the person being victimised is too helpless to stop the perpetrator and chooses to stop them using violence. If the victim results to using violence, does this mean that they are just the same as the perpetrator? If someone purposely sets out to do another person harm, would this mean that they are just as guilty?
You may, or may not have heard about the case of Steven Avery, an American convicted murderer who had been wrongfully convicted of both sexual assault and attempted murder in the year 1985. He served eighteen years out of a twenty-year sentence only to be exonerated by DNA testing in 2003 and was later released to then be convicted of being a murderer again. Avery’s case provoked widespread discussion into the criminal justice system and how people were in fact found guilty. Important ideas stemmed from this incident, it proved the fact that evidence is not always accurate which gives people probable cause into arguing that not all murderers are guilty. However some like to say and believe in the common phrase “innocent until proven guilty”, nowadays the phrase has become more like a cliché. In this day and age people strongly believe in “an eye for an eye”; if someone has been trialed and found guilty, rightfully they should pay for what they have done, based on the crime committed, an appropriate consequence should be issued. We all strongly believed that the justice system would have limited or even reduced the amount of violence in the world, when in actual fact there has been little reduction to violence; the world is still a cruel place.
Mel’s Views 