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Comment by jlgreco | Hacker News Reader

As I said, you can object to the terminology "murder", but that is as far as the objections can go.

My objection is to comparing it to lynching. Not on a technicality based on who is performing the act, but based on the existence of a fair trial. Versus a mob acting on mere accusation.

Fair enough, though it is essential to remember that the problems with lynching are not just that the court system is not used. There have been many lynchings that occurred after the trial and a guilty verdict (for example, the infamous lynching of Jesse Washington, where he was dragged from the courtroom immediately after being sentenced to death.)

Of course trials at that time and place were anything but fair, but we don't generally refer to those state-run executions as lynchings (perhaps we should).

Well, if the mob wants to drag a guilty person out of the courtroom and kill them via firing line or guillotine or proper hanging or some other quick method, it's less than ideal but acceptable. Torture is a completely different issue, and can never be justified as punishment.

How could that possibly be acceptable? Not just the fact that it remains mob justices, post trial or not, but what about appeals? Errors? New evidence?

And how is any of that not torture? Seems like your definition of torture is just "doesn't result in death."

Sometimes appeals are needed but that's getting far too into the picky details of the court system. And if the evidence was wrong somehow it's probably not going to get fixed: justice is wrong sometimes and the only solution is to never jail anyone, that is not a debate for this conversation.

Anyway torture, simply defined, is an act causing extreme pain in someone. And not just for five seconds. Hanging-done-wrong can be torture. Many ways of killing someone are torture. But the fast methods are not. Tell me your definition if it can somehow apply to the use of a guillotine.

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