Quote Originally Posted by Falls City Beer View Post
How can I answer that?

I'm sure, emotionally, vengeance would be foremost in my mind.

But it's a good thing that it's the state that prosecutes, that it's society that intervenes on my behalf to bring about justice. I don't have any desire to live in a world run by vigilantism. The law exists to take the power of vengeance from my hands.
How can society maintain order if every murderer who can find a psychiatrist willing to take the stand and testify to his mental instability has his sentence mitigated?

At the end of the day, must there not be at least some immutable level of personal responsibility regardless of upbringing, 'mental deficiency,' or perceived societal failure?