A BROKEN JUDICIAL SYSTEM

Some things in life still astound me because of their ludicrousness. Some things in life are so outrageous that they defy any type of logic. Life should be predictable when it comes to law and punishment. Our judicial system is highly unpredictable. This is because the basis of our present law is relativism. Relativism looks at the world as evolving. Law, to the relativist, is also evolving. It is in a state of flux.

There are degrees of crime. Some crimes are more heinous than others and deserve a greater punishment. The Biblical principle of punishment is that the punishment must be commensurate with the crime. This principle is stated in Exodus 21:23-25, "And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Murder demands life for life. A murderer forfeits his life when he takes someone else’s life. Murder is one of the most heinous crimes that man can commit and its punishment reflects this fact. Theft is a crime but it is of less magnitude than murder. A thief’s punishment requires restitution, and biblically, this means usually double restitution. The victim is to be made whole by the restitution and the double restitution is designed as a deterrent as well by making up to the victim the trouble and loss of potential income the victim has suffered.

In the Briefly Police section of my local newspaper, a headline reads, Man gets 10-year sentence for theft, assault. Billy Wayne Thrift pled guilty to aggravated assault and theft under $500. For this plea, he received a 10-year sentence for the assault and has to serve 45 percent of this sentence before being eligible for parole. This would mean that he would have to serve 4.5 years of his sentence.

What Thrift had done was to steal a hedge clipper and leaf blower from K-Mart. An employee from K-Mart confronted Thrift in the parking lot. Thrift pulled out a knife from his pocket and pointed it at the K-Mart employee. Thrift apparently did not stab the employee because after pointing the knife at the employee, he ran to his vehicle. (One wonders about the intelligence level of the employee). It was an aggravated assault because of the use of a weapon.

This is clearly a crime. There is no disputing this fact. It deserves to be punished. Where the rub comes is when someone like Mary Winkler murders her husband in cold blood by shooting him in the back while he was asleep is convicted of voluntary manslaughter and receives a three year sentence for which she served only six months of. Thrift’s crime does not even compare at all to Winkler’s and yet he is going to serve a sentence that is eight times greater.

There is a disparity between aggravated assault and murder. Our judicial system is saying that Thrift is a worse criminal than Mary Winkler. This is unbelievable because you cannot wrap your mind around it. It is not logical. It is an assault on the principle of equality before the law. Our present judicial system is, as this example makes clear, broken. It is time to use the punishments of the Bible in our civil law system.