The way a justice system should work is that any law can be 'gotten away with' if society deems the individual circumstances sufficiently outside the behaviour the law is there to prevent.
Movies are full of protagonists doing illegal things because of the unlikely circumstances they find themselves in.
An example for your murder would be a man who lies in wait for the killer of his daughter. It's possible such a crime would be 'overlooked' or shelved in some way at some point in the journey to justice.
The law is both objective AND subjective. When you commit a crime and are found guilty there are sentencing guidelines. You can’t get off with community service if you’re found guilty of murder and you can’t be put in jail for 10 years for a traffic infraction. But many crimes will have huge differences in how a person can be sentenced dependent on mitigating factors. If you’ve heard “they’re facing 10 to life” that means they could go to jail for radically different amounts of time depending on how the judge and jury feel about the circumstances of the crime. This allows for judges and juries to have some level of discretion without throwing out objective standards. The law shouldn’t be wholly subjective, but it shouldn’t be completely blind to the circumstances of the situation either.
Agreed on all your points in your second paragraph. And I agree that speeding is far more dangerous than people generally accept. Maybe if you or I were the elected judge we would have given the guy a ticket. I just don’t think this case is an example of the justice system failing. It is simply the normal use of discretion in sentencing guidelines.
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u/TomDestry Feb 27 '25
The way a justice system should work is that any law can be 'gotten away with' if society deems the individual circumstances sufficiently outside the behaviour the law is there to prevent.
Movies are full of protagonists doing illegal things because of the unlikely circumstances they find themselves in.
An example for your murder would be a man who lies in wait for the killer of his daughter. It's possible such a crime would be 'overlooked' or shelved in some way at some point in the journey to justice.