...Is that a fault of the justice system or an indication of it being applied correctly?
I'd suggest the latter...
Much like the over-abundance of suspended sentences for first time offenders in Australia - including manslaughter, as you'd be more than aware - if the Legal system is handling out "justice" that can never be obtained, then how can justice be said to have been dealt?
The mother in my original post can
never and will
never pay the amount of money the Court has deemed to be justified. If that amount is considered to be justice, how can justice be obtained if it can never be paid? Bernie Madoff can never serve the required amount of time. He'll die in Prison long before he's served even half of his sentence. The judge didn't sentence him to death - they sentenced him to
jail time, however the severity of such amounting to a death sentence. This isn't justice.
Justice isn't about "making sure no one commits crime", because this is impossible. The fact that Death Row inmates exist show that Death Sentences are not something that discourages the crimes that they're handed down on; making more people pay for crimes with their lives will do nothing more than kill more people rather than rehabilitate them.
Also, just so you know, it's more expensive to kill someone than to allow them to live - the cost of the appeals system, including court time, coupled with the years that they're housed in specalised wings of their Prisons amounts to more than the cost of keeping them in general population.
Justice is about balance. Ruining a woman's life, her children's lives - or at least a good portion of them, pissing off all the people who've read about the story and - I can promise - encouraging piracy as a means of fighting back against "the man", and promoting a lop-sided legal system is not balance; it is a perversion of the law. Why does the RIAA's rights to songs
they didn't create exceed those of the woman and her children?
