The fact that a crime might have been committed with impunity in the past may make it seem more familiar and less gruesome, but surely does not give it any greater legitimacy.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society.
The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.
Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to crime: the realistically detailed police procedural, usually grim and downbeat, and the more left-field, joyous theatre of ideas in which past masters once specialised. Knowing that I would never be able to handle the former, I set about reviving the latter.
We are often deterred from crime by the disgrace of others.
When a crime is committed, only the victim and the victim's close circle experience the event as pain, terror, death. To people hearing or reading about it, crime is a metaphor, a symbol of the ancient battles fought every day: evil versus good, chaos versus order.
Crimes of the century differ from the garden variety of murders. They involve wealth, celebrity and powerful attorneys, and live on for decades after the verdict has been rendered.
Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that's so deep in history that there's no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.
The business of popularizing crime is how we expose the faults in our justice system. It's how we expose police misconduct.
The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.