Trials and tribulations of the century

When John A. Muhammad goes on trial Tuesday in the first prosecution of the sniper shootings that terrified Washington one year ago, intricate legal maneuverings over motive, forensics, psychology and the death penalty will unfold before a rapt national audience. But behind the scenes, an equally complicated process of security and logistics will play itself out largely in secret.

¡¥We were concerned that someone might want to kill one of our defendants, and we didn¡¦t want to have to have someone punished for that.¡¦
¡X DAVID GARRETT
St. Clair County, Ala., sheriff's captain

http://msnbc.com/news/967498.asp?0cv=CB10

I've never had a family members killed so I don't know these victims feelings but I'm feeling like the Bush
mentality might be responsible for the 'I'm God, jury, judge and executioner'. Is it then everyones right in America to take violent action against someone who's broken a law? Where does it begin and stop? It's OK to kill these guys. Is it OK to kill a tobacco CEO who knowingly withheld cancer fact data and then your wife directly died from the CEOs actions? If someone lost their life savings in Bush buddy Ken Lay Enron's stock and he could afford medication for his wife and she died could he then go after Lay?

Mr. Bush, our leader, do we draw the line at criminal, civil or moral law when we take revenge?

... so I'm not going to give an opinion about it.

considering that it's the State taking vengeance for the victims, and not the victim's families, that's not much of an issue.

I'm not a big fan of the Death Penalty, but if there's an airtight case against these guys, in relativistic terms they probably deserve it. Their crimes certainly were about as heinous and senseless as you can get, and there are not a whole lot of mitigating circumstances to argue against the death penalty in this case that I've heard of.

taking vengeance which the author seems to imply is just but against the law so we're going to protect the potential perpetrator. (I think.)

The concern about angry citizens of victim's families wanting to take revenge goes a lot farther back then the start of the Bush administration (see Jack Ruby for example). I think the fear of reprisal is always an issue when the killings are exceptionally heinous or high visibility; children, serial killers etc.

If the cops had caught them in the act of drawing a bead on the next victiom, would anybody have quibbled about the cop taking the shot and killing them on the spot?

It seems they are trying to use the legal system and they are under a lot of press scrutiny as to how they handle things. IMHO I don't see this as the state taking revenge, since they have what seems like a pretty solid body of evidence that these guys are the shooters.

Don P.