If you insist. But keep in mind that by killing the rapists, he is taking from them the one they didn't take from her: life. They deserve to have their dignity and their freedom taken away, but not their lives.
That is my point. I don't believe that it is justice to do worse to the criminals than they did to their victim(s). You clearly do. Suit yourself.
Of course, I have no children (nor do I plan to), so maybe I just don't understand what parents in these situations go through. But I'm also not a racist child molester. I am thus in a position to be totally neutral in such a case, and approach the situation unemotionally. And I find that aside from Carl Lee's daughter there are no innocents in this situation. Her attackers are blatantly guilty, but so is her father.
I'm in an odd position. On the one hand I don't necessarily believe the rapists deserved to die. My rationale for this has already been given. But, at the same time, despite not being a father myself, I can at least imagine Carl Lee's pain and grief. Thus, I accept that what he did is the reaction any parent who loved their children would have. Someone hurts their child, they, as a parent, feel the need to protect and avenge the child.
But I hold that understandable isn't the same as justifiable, legally or morally. Carl Lee still committed a crime by taking the law into his own hands and killing two unarmed men, and wounding a third accidentally. Whether they deserved it or not is beside the point here. Which is something the movie tries its best to gloss over, but doesn't successfully do despite Carl Lee being found not guilty.
The question isn't whether what Carl Lee did was understandable. It was whether it was justified. And in the manner the movie presents it to us, I believe it was not. He guilty of exactly what they said he was.
I feel the movie handled it wrong.
What should've happened is a racist judge and jury found them not guilty, then Carl Lee goes nuts with rage and grief and kills them in revenge after his faith in unbiased justice is shaken. Carl Lee's decision to retaliate against them would've been more justifiable to me. The system wrongs him and denies his daughter justice, and he snaps. Probably guns them down on the courthouse steps. In addition to being understandable, this would've been justifiable, as the court is clearly corrupt and the trial is a sham; by trying to avoid their punishment and being given special treatment by a biased court, the rapists thus forfeit their right to be tried fairly.
But this didn't happen. It jumps the gun and has Carl Lee kill the rapists before the trial has even commenced. While they're on their way to it, in fact. Carl Lee never gave them a chance to even be rightly found guilty by a jury of their peers. Doing what he did after they'd been found not guilty I could've found just.
"I mean, really, how many times will you look under Jabba's manboobs?"
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mradam-3
14 years ago
It's not like it was nice of them that they didn't kill her. They tried to.
I understand your point about the court case. It probably should have been allowed to finish. But now that it wasn't, I don't give a rat's ass what the rapists lost. Good riddance. If it was my decision, the case would have been closed as soon as those pieces of shït were killed. I would have gone straight to dealing with the accidental shooting of the cop.
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