Ann, your comments are, as always, most thought-provoking. I want to respond to just one of them, however, since it stood out to me.
...a society that declares a man innocent when he kills because he can't control his own fury... Terry, I don't want to live in a society like that.
I know absolutely nothing about Swedish law except that it resembles both English common law and American law. In the US, if someone loses his or her temper and kills another person over something that isn't worth a life, such as stealing something of little value or trading verbal insults, it's a prosecutable crime.
But let me tell you about a true incident that took place in Texas in the mid 90's which stirred up a firestorm of controversy. A black man in his mid-20s (who was later revealed to be a drug dealer and thief and had assaulted several people) chased and shot to death his girlfriend just outside the exit to a large shopping mall. The reports said that he shot her until she fell, and because she was still moving, he stood over her and shot her in the head, killing her.
A white man had just driven into the parking lot and witnessed this murder. He had just left a shooting range and his personal weapon was (according to law) now unloaded and secured in a locked box in the back seat of his car. In the time it took the original killer to walk (yes, he walked, he didn't run) to his car, the new arrival had unlocked his gun box, loaded his weapon, and exited his vehicle. The man ran to the killer's car, pointed his pistol at the driver, and shouted for him to stop and exit the car.
The driver tried to escape. The man with the pistol shot the driver and killed him, then left the scene. After the police arrived and the news media began broadcasting the story, however, he contacted the police and surrendered peacefully.
Much public outcry ensued. Some of it was anger that the man had taken the law into his own hands. Some was racially motivated; there were black people outraged that a white man had killed a black man in broad daylight (never mind the dead woman, who was also black), and there were white people who were glad that a white man had killed a black man in broad daylight.
(Neither of those viewpoints are my own, and, in fact, both are equally abhorrent to me because they place a false racial difference above the issue of right and wrong. I strive to be skin color-blind, but I know I fall short of my own ideal. Still trying, though.)
I don't know how likely a scenario such as this would be in any of the other countries of other FOLCs, but the end result was that the second shooter was no-billed by the grand jury. That means that no charges were brought against him, because the state of Texas determined that he was acting not as a vigilante but as a concerned citizen who was defending the rights and safety of other law-abiding citizens. This incident took place before the state of Texas enacted its current conceal-and-carry laws allowing citizens to carry guns.
Why did I even bring this up? To illustrate that there are occasions where the law and society both admit that the deliberate killing of another person is justified. The man who shot the killer in his car was quoted as saying that he couldn't allow the killer to get away scot free, especially since he'd just murdered a woman in broad daylight.
I know this is a controversial subject, and I know that not everyone who reads this story will like it, and I know that some won't read it at all because of the subject matter. That's okay. But what I find interesting is how close you came to making an absolute moral judgement, Ann. I know how passionate you are about women's causes, and you also know that I do not disagree with most of what you say on the subject, at least in principle. But moral absolutes are impossible without appealing to some moral authority higher than societal norms. And because a legal system can regulate actions but not attitudes, it can never be the moral arbiter of the people.
Because the law can judge our actions but not our attitudes, we can't derive moral guidance from it. I may need to rephrase Superman's response to Clark's question about killing Bill Church and limit it to the legal aspects of the case.
Thanks for your thoughtful and thought-provoking comments, Ann. You (and many others on these boards) have the gift of disagreeing without attacking, and I appreciate it. Thanks to all who've left comments, and I promise things will all work out in the end.
And I'll be interested to hear from all of you on the issue of Superman's guilt after both the prosecution and the defense had posted their closing arguments. Of course, that won't be for a while yet.
