When people regularly feel compelled to mete out vigilante justice, it's a sign that the justice system is broken not people's sense of fairness.
The alternative is to make the criminal justice system into some kind of religion lecturing to the public about what value system they should have.
And, here, if you polled the general public you'd like get an overwhelming majority who believe that serving 20 years in prison for the beating, starvation, abandonment and murder of a child was too light a sentence. Habitually ignoring such sentiment is detrimental for a society long term as people lose faith in the government being able to protect them and maintain the right to be the sole arbiter of justice. (Avoiding mob justice is equally important, but this is not a case of ambiguous facts or uncertain guilt, just whether 20 years could ever be the right sentence for this abhorrent crime.)
Remember, governments get their power from and serve the people. Not the other way around.
Nobody would be complaining if she was trying to receive a HS diploma. But throw a prestigious school in the mix and all of a sudden its an issue.
Yes. The rejection is not about further punishing Ms. Jones. It is about protecting Harvard from bad press.
Is it unreasonable that Harvard admissions be based in part on protecting its image in the publuc eye?
Consider what that says about their integrity, their culture, and their goals as an institution.
To put in perspective, we're still at 60% support for the death penalty in this country.
Peoples justice is not justice, it's revenge. You can't cherry pick the decisions of the justice system to fit your personal world views. You either believe in the ability of the justice system to impose the correct sentences, or you don't.
This private institution can base their decisions on anything they want, but in this particular case the reasoning is asinine and cowardly. It has nothing to do with her as a person and everything to do with a bad PR incident.