Morality test: A Case of Justice.
(This "morality test" was inspired by a crime drama I watched recently)
The year is 1921. In America, a key member of a gang kidnaps a young girl and demands a ransom of $200,000. The parents pay the ransom after a few weeks only for the police to find the dead body of the girl soon afterwards. The gangster had killed the girl only an hour after he kidnapped her.
The mother (who was pregnant) was so shocked by this that she collapsed and went into labour. Both her and her newborn child died in the process. The father, a colonel, distraut at losing his family and life all at once, shot himself.
The gangster was put on trial, but the eaders of his gang bribed and threatened the jury so that he got away free. He then took the $200,000 and left for Europe.
5 years later, 12 of the victim family's close friends and family get together and find out that the gangster (who we shall call Joe) is travelling acroos Europe in a overnight train. They then book all the other cabins on that train and plan to take justice into their own hands.
On the first night of the trip, the 12 people enter in Joe's cabin. Joe, who had been drugged earlier in the evening, was unable to stop them. One by one, they take turns stabbing Joe in the chest, they then find the $200,000 and take it with the intention to donate it to a trust named after the little girl's family.
However, you were also in the same carriage on that train and after some detective work you concluded that the 12 people together had commited the crime. The police have been contacted and are waiting at the next station, but you have to decide whether to have the 12 people arrest and put to trial for murder, or whether their actions were justified, if so you would just tell the policemen it was an intruder how commited the murder whom then jumped of the train and escaped.
(For those of you who require for character development for the people, if you want to judge them by their nationality/class/etc., then just ask. At the moment I think it's unnessecary)
Have the people arrested
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Let them go
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Have them arrested, an eye for an eye will leave the world blind, yes its awful what happened, and a terrible tragedy, and he deserved to die to, but hatred is not a good response... but i would risk going to prison to kill someone who killed my kid Side: Have the people arrested
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On the one hand, I can certainly understand the frustration at the failure for justice to be carried out against "Joe" and the desire to take revenge. Ultimately, however, if you are to have social order you need to enforce your laws when able. An initial miscarriage of justice does not make a subsequent miscarriage just or ethical. It would be better if the family and friends of the victimized family were to pool their energy and efforts towards addressing the flaws in the justice system that allowed the injustice to occur in the first place, or tackling organized crime through grassroots activism or employment with agencies addressing that issue. Actually changing the system positively or deconstructing the structures that allowed the first scenario to occur would, in my opinion, be a far better way to remember those that were lost. Side: Have the people arrested
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