To Discuss lynching justice

After midnight, a heavy snow forced the luxury train from Istanbul to Paris, the Orient Express, to a halt. The luxury train, which has been at capacity all year, was found to be missing a passenger that morning. An American died in his box, he was stabbed twelve times, but the door of his box was locked. In the vast snow field, there are no footprints of anyone leaving on the snow: the murderer must be among the passengers in the carriage. But all have perfect alibi and "just happen" to testify against each other. Everything was witnessed by the great detective Hercule Poirot who also took the train. Just as the case gradually became clear and the flaws of the murderer began to appear, Poirot told two different endings...
The rich American named Ratchett made his fortune by kidnapping. Once he got a huge ransom, but violated the agreement and brutally killed the little girl he kidnapped, and continued to get away with bribes. The little girl's mother, who was pregnant at the time, gave birth to a stillborn child and died of serious illness. The father also died in depression. The babysitter of the little girl's family was interrogated repeatedly and suicided after being accused of a trumped-up murder. It can be seen that the murderer is very likely to have a feud with Ratchett because of this case. After many years, he finally found an opportunity to take revenge and killed the kidnapper with the same cruel "twelve knives".

"Murder on the Orient Express" is a pawn of mass crime. The murderers were actually all the people in the same car - 12 in all, one knife at a time, who took Ratchett's life. At the end of the book, Poirot did not tell the police the facts after finding out the truth, but found an excuse for the murderer to escape to prevaricate and close the case, expressing his support for the 12 "Avengers" with practical actions.
When I read this book for the first time, the ending made me deeply moved and satisfied. But after repeated reading, a difficult question came to mind: even if Ratchett was once a cruel kidnapper, even if he took other people's lives lightly, are these 12 "Avengers" qualified to take his life?

In the past centuries, when the law enforcement was comparably weak, this kind of "lynching to seek revenge" was practical. But the contradiction between human nature and legal principles is particularly prominent at this time: a "damn" criminal accidentally escaped the punishment of the law, can people use their own methods to "maintain justice"? This can't help but remind me of another book that discusses this in depth - "Blade of Wandering" by Keigo Higashino.
The story of "Blade of Wandering" is more realistic than "Orient Express", so it has also caused more controversy. Emo is the only daughter of Nagamine Shigeki. She has a lively personality and is well-behaved and sensible. But when 16-year-old Emo wore a precious kimono on her way home from the fireworks display, she became the prey of three delinquent teenagers: Kaiji Sugano, Tomozaki Atsuya, and Makoto Nakai. For Kaiji Sugano and Tomozaki Atsuya, who are suspended from high school and take intimidation, theft, and extortion as commonplace, it is not a big deal to intoxicate, dizzy, and wantonly abuse women who are "my taste", but the three injected a large amount of drugs into Emo's body and madly abused her. Two days later, an unknown object wrapped in blue plastic sheeting and a wooden ladder appeared in the riverside park downstream of Arakawa.
"When he actually saw his daughter's tragic death, Shigeki was still crying hoarsely. His screams and roars seemed to never stop." Needless to say, it was homicide.
But a dramatic scene occurs, Makoto Nakai revealed the crimes of Sugano and Atsuya. Shigeki, who had worked hard to find evidence and investigate, found himself powerless against these juveniles at this moment. According to the "Juvenile Law" promulgated by Japan, minors who commit crimes cannot even publish their names, not to mention the punishment or even the death penalty.
In fact, before knowing these verdicts, Shigeki's only hope is to severely punish the criminals: the fact that his daughter died tragically cannot be changed, and the only thing he can do is to ensure the punishment as a warning to prevent more girls from being murdered. But the "Juvenile Law" became the last straw that broke Shigeki's reason. It was after this that Shigeki began to pursue Atsuya and Sugano frantically.

"If the law cannot judge sin, justice will do it."
The purpose of the police, the book says, is not to protect, but to arrest those who break the law. But is law always right?
Who does the Juvenile Law protect? Obviously, Shigeki Emo is dead, but her murderer is safe and sound. The trial of Sugano and Atsuya was not made public despite the murder. Why? Because they are minors; everyone knows that murder will be jailed, but Sugano and Atsuya don't need it, why? Because they are minors; according to the Juvenile Law, Atsuya and Sugano are sentenced to 6 months of "social service". Based on this, it is not difficult for us to draw a conclusion: to kill a young girl, a criminal who is a minor only needs to pay the price of 6 months of "social services". The law does not warn or punish criminals but creates a naked criminal utopia.

The ancient Babylonian "Code of Hammurabi" once stipulated homomorphic revenge, that is, "a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye", and the same punishment is imposed on the perpetrator. But 4,000 years later, the "progressive" we have completely condoned underage criminals in the form of law. Seduction, drug injection, homicide... the crime is added to the crime, but the crime of the perpetrator is written off with a sentence of "underage" or "mental illness". Just imagine, when people see the case of Atsuya and Sugano, won't they complain about the injustice because they don't even need to go to jail for killing someone? Aren't the girls of the blooming season intimidated by the law's connivance of crime? Wouldn't the scumbags who have been infected with alcoholism, drug addiction, or even seduce girls become more reckless after seeing the news? Aren't the invisible criminals who have the malice in their hearts and who were originally afraid of the law not being implemented, fearless because of the low cost? The law is the last line of defense for crime. When the law loses its deterrent and coercive power, the bad guys will do nothing but do evil everywhere, but the good guys have no choice but to do nothing. The whole society is in chaos, and crime grows like a Pandora's box. The source of all this is the ineffectiveness of the law.
We often expect "justice will be late but not absent", but at the moment the "injustice" protected by the law is swaggering in broad daylight. If the law cannot punish evil deeds, there will inevitably be more peaks and trees, picking up the "blade of hesitation" in their hands. In this way, a crime that is not punished will cause dozens or hundreds of chain crimes. The inevitable result is great social turmoil and unrest.

Lynching for revenge is not protected. So, for extreme crimes, should the death penalty exist?
In contemporary times, many countries follow the legal principle that it is wrong to deprive others of their right to life. 106 countries have abolished the death penalty. Many people hold this view: "Everyone is dead, what's the use of killing another?" But the purpose of laws and punishments has never been to completely make up for losses, and there is no law that can completely deter and ensure in advance. No one dares to commit it, and crime will always exist. The role of the law is to find a balance between safeguarding the interests of law-abiding persons and violating the interests of others. The protection clauses for minors such as "social services" are intended to give minors the opportunity to rehabilitate, but the chances of rehabilitating those who have committed heinous crimes while they are still minors are too low and too low. The law has the effect of deterring crime in advance, but after the deterrence fails, what the law needs to do after the event is to try to find a just means and maintain the belief of justice and fairness. In general, whether or not the death penalty should exist should be a more deliberate topic of discussion.