A Kentucky sheriff has been arrested after fatally shooting a judge in his chambers, police say.
District Judge Kevin Mullins died at the scene after being shot multiple times in the Letcher County Courthouse, Kentucky State Police said.
Letcher County Sheriff Shawn Stines, 43, has been charged with one count of first-degree murder.
The shooting happened on Thursday after an argument inside the court, police said, but they have not yet revealed a motive.
I’m sorry, no. No, no, no.
Don’t care what the reason is, we don’t do vigilantism. If someone diddles your daughter it’s not your fatherly duty to murder and get jailed. It’s your fatherly duty to ensure the fucker is locked up by law and that your daughter will be taken care of, THAT is your duty.
Leave vigilantism to Hollywood movies
When immoral crimes go unpunished due to a corrupt legal system, violence often follows. That judge isn’t the first, nor will be the last, to learn that claiming to be “above the law” offers no real protection. A fair and functional legal system is essential for a less violent society. When justice isn’t applied equally, violence rises. Laws don’t prevent violence—they only punish it afterward. I imagine many people’s last words were some version of “too bad, because that’s illegal.”
Based on my experience with how the law deals with victims of child sexual assault, I think all we have is vigilantism.
This would happen multiple times before it’s stopped and this is only challenged by the power position of the assailant.
It’s not great, but, in my experience, sexual assault is not taken very seriously, unfortunately.
I’m sorry but o have to call bullshit here
Child abuse and sexual assault are both taken VERY seriously by law enforcement and justice systems world wide. The thing though is that at least here in the west we have this pesky principle of being innocent until proven guilty, which is a good thing ™.
It basically makes.sure that there is a preference of criminals not being convicted over innocents being in jail. Again this is a good thing.
It does cause, however, that sometimes criminals go free, and they they do, it’s with good reason; by law they are innocent, still.
Now you might think: well, then let’s go vigilantism on his ass, right? No. If you kill this guy or girl extrajudicially, you are simply murdering someone, and you deserve to be jailed, the end. It sucks that not all rapists can be jailed but that means that it can’t be proven, and that is the point with rape: a lot of times it’s a he said-she said. If she claims it was against her will, he says that she contented, who do you believe? If a child claims that he or she was abused for a long time, we won’t always be able to prove it either.
It’s not as simple as saying that the law doesn’t care.
They are not taken seriously by law enforcement. They are advertised to be taken seriously.
It’s awful but that’s the way it is. If your experience working with a victim in your jurisdiction has been a positive one I’m really glad to hear that and I would love to know what things made it work so we’ll.
In my experience supporting a victim, there’s no ramifications for the perpetrator, no appetite for investigation and no support for the victim outside the private system (the support hotlines are particularly useless).
Police simply are not there to protect and support victims of personal violence offences.
You can call bullshit all you want, but this is my lived experience in a western country and I have nothing to gain by being deceptive 🤷.