When Yorkton This Week published the update last week that Richard Lesann had been granted unsupervised outings from the psychiatric hospital, it was no surprise that traffic on our website and Facebook page exploded.
It was also no surprise that there was public outrage. There is probably no other aspect of our justice system that piques the ire as a judgment of not criminally responsible.
This is a really fascinating subject for me because it brings up the fundamental question of what is justice?
The most common sentiment regarding Lesann being found not criminally responsible, being granted limited release and having the potential in the very near future of a conditional discharge is that this is everything that is wrong about our justice system.
What I hear when people say that is they think there is not enough vengeance in our justice system. Perhaps that is true.
There was a time when the two words were synonymous. Deuteronomy 19:21 states: “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”
Justice was practiced like this for millennia. In many places it still is. It is also outrageously corrupted with punishments that have no proportionality to the crime whatsoever as evidenced by the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
Vengeance is emotional and personal, a desire to make things even, an eye for an eye. Justice, in the case of evolved democratic societies such as Canada, is impartial and impersonal.
As hard as it may be for people to stomach the disposition of cases such as Lesann, the system has worked the way it is designed to work.
Ethically, two wrongs can never make a right. This is precisely why we not longer have the death penalty in Canada.
Still, it does not feel right that someone can do something so wrong, even if he did not know it at the time, and get away with it.
It is a struggle between the intellectual and the emotional.
Still, we must try not to confuse justice and revenge.
As Mahatma Ghandi said, “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
According to Matthew (5:38) Jesus Christ also dismissed the concept. “You have heard that it was said, ‘eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
Of course, that is much more easily said than done.
