I wonder what the long term psychological damage is being done to the families who never really get closure? There the ones who I would like to see set the penalty, not some laws written by a bunch of milquetoasts.
Ironsides, that is just about the worst way to administer justice, that really can lead to a travesty of justice. They do that in Islamic countries.
Under Sharia, if a man commits a murder, the punishment is left to the relatives of the victim (male relatives, of course). The murderer can offer to compensate them by paying them. If they find the offer of money acceptable, matter ends there, the murderer then does not fact any additional penalties.
So of course, if a rich man kills a poor man, usually he can get away with it, by making a handsome payment to the poor man. If a poor man kills a rich man, he is out of luck.
And this is the system of justice you would like to bring to USA? I can just imagine the scenario. A man would like to get rid of his wife of 25 years, he wants to live with this pretty young thing, maybe even make her his trophy wife. He is thinking of divorcing his wife.
But then he gets lucky and his wife is killed (accidentally) by a robber, who was robbing his house. The penalty is left to the man, under your system. Forget about penalty, the man probably would give a handsome reward to the robber.
If you want to bring a type of Sharia to USA, that is your business. All I can say is, no way it is coming to Canada. Here in Ontario, we recently fought tooth and nail attempts to introduce Sharia (the civil aspects only, not the criminal aspects) for Muslims. We are not about to let something like this pollute the Canadian jurisprudence, you can have it in USA.
