Do law-abiding citizens have the right to an opinion on criminal penalties?
Well, yes, they have the right to an opinion on criminal penalties, but gods forbid they should be allowed to exercise them. Humans have a lot of problems. They tend to be swayed as much by emotion as fact, they almost never understand the entire situation, they follow the majority opinion, and they tend to count positive evidence (meaning pro guilty, in court cases) over negative (not guilty). Psychologists say that it takes ten years of active practice to become a expert on a complex subject such as medicine or law. We leave the fate of any person accused to be decided by a jury consisting of laymen! A rational law-abiding citizen should consider passing judgment under these conditions to be immoral. But that’s just deciding if we should penalize the ‘criminal’. Our government is set up so that the actual law for which the criminals are being penalized for is decided by elected representatives. This means that, except for on controversial subjects like the death penalty, few criminal
