Should certain homicide cases such as vigilany justice be excluded from the law?

Question

I am writing a research paper on social injustices. I wanted to find cases in which people have been excused of murder due to vigilany justice. Please give examples of people who took matters into their own hands and were punished by the law. I was also wondering what the current law status was in the United States of America. If you can, please also bring up any homicide cases/vigilany justice/people punished by law that was brought up in any of these books/plays:
Antigone
Romeo and Juliet
To Kill A Mockingbird
Inherit the Wind
Greek Mythology

Thank you.
Greek mythology

Answer 1

it's not "vigilany" or (as the first answer suggests) "vigilanty"... no worries on misspelling it, i think it's funnier that someone corrected you by misspelling it themselves. it's VIGILANTE... which stems from latin meaning "watcher" (sort of like a watchdog).

anyways, some cases ARE excluded from the law in cases of self-defense (you kill someone that was trying to kill you and you had no other recourse). or crimes of passion (you kill the guy sleeping with your wife).

however, there are certain guides. for example, you cannot claim self-defense if you shoot a guy who tried to rob you unarmed... you pull your gun out, he runs away and you shoot him in the back... that will not count as self-defense, it's murder.

also, if you catch your wife sleeping with another dude and you go away for a week, THEN come back and shoot her or the other dude... not a crime of passion but murder (crime of passion only if you did it before you could cool off).

these are just general examples. in some cases you could still get a reduced charge (manslaughter) even if you claim self-defense.

as with "vigilante" law... the reason we have police is to avoid that. of course if you think of Batman catching some crook/psycho murderer, then vigilante justice seems like a good cause... however, the reality is that most vigilante justice in the past turned into lynch mobs and chaos. also think of the wild west movies... everybody shooting each other. and unlike the movies, it wasn't always the Clint Eastwood-type who was really a good guy and gets the girl at the end. it was the hairy ugly mug who shot someones grandma and then killed the sheriff and called it vigilante justice.

i believe the majority of people prefer to have some form of order and again, that is why we have the police system.

Answer 2

No..we hire, train, and employe police officers for a reason.
Can you imagine the sheer carnage if we allow people to enforce the law in their own way...the murder rate would be astronomical...and can you imagine howmany people would get killed as a suspect of a crime and really was innocent.

A few months ago in a kansas neighborhood...a few people got together to beat up and ended up killing a suspected pedophile who was actually innocent as the pedophile never moved into the neighborhood but had the same name as the other guy...vigilantism must be outlawed.

Answer 3

The taking of a life is nothing short of murder as long as it
was not in self defense and should be treated as such.

Answer 4

I believe you mean, "vigilanty justice". Sorry. Can't help with that, but consider: the #1 cause of death in the U.S. today is doctors' errors, pharmacist' errors, nurses' errors, etc. Doctors can, and do, "kill" people and get away Scot free! Is that injustice enough for you?