Known Plaintext

My personal take on it comes down to this: To wrongly execute anyone for a crime they did not commit is a miscarriage of justice that diminishes us all, and we should use all sane and reasonable measures at our disposal to see that it does not happen. But, at the same time, there are those among us who become like rabid animals with utterly no respect whatsoever for the lives of others, who kill innocents without compunction, remorse or regret (and often go on to brag about it and regard it as a mark of honor). Cold-blooded killers who have voluntarily chosen to disregard the moral constraints that we consider normal in civilized society. We cannot allow them to go free in society to slaughter again; but neither should we impose upon society as a whole the cost of feeding them, housing them, and caring for their ills for the rest of their natural lives.

I have considerable sympathy with the old Norse system of law, in which justice was not about retribution so much as about reparation. If you wronged someone, you made reparation, you paid weregild. If an offender committed any of a number of heinous crimes - murder, arson, treason, desertion in the face of the enemy - and refused applicable weregild, refused to make reparation where possible ... well, that was a níðing offense. He became literally an outlaw — acting outside of the law, and no longer under its protection. The níðing was considered the enemy of all mankind. It was forbidden to house, feed, aid or shelter a níðing. His possessions were forfeit, his wife considered a widow, his children orphans, and it was every man's duty to kill him on sight if the opportunity presented itself. In some variants of the law, a man declared níðing for refusal to pay weregild for a theft or a killing could, if he could live to do so, redeem himself by making reparation as due; but all the risk to accomplish it was his to take. (There was of course no hope of making reparation for treason.)

As David Drake once put it, "The Vikings had a system of law, and for when the law failed, they had a system of justice. Justice carried a sword."

I think we have lost sight of the idea that the committer of a truly heinous crime has voluntarily ceased to be a part of civilized society, and that our civilization owes them nothing and is better off without them. It's not about vengeance. It's about the calm, objective decision that a criminal has no possible benefit left to civilization that outweighs the clear and present threat he poses to it, and that the world is a better place without him in it.