VIGILANTE JUSTICE

Within the past week, Connecticut lawyer Jonathon Edington,29, broke into a neighbor's house and stabbed Barry James,58, to death right after Edington's wife informed him their two-year old daughter said that James had molested her. James had once been arrested for DWI but had no other arrest record. No child molestation allegations were ever made against him. After the stabbing, the Edingtons claimed that James had exposed himself several times in front of his window. After Edington's release on $1,000,000 bail, his wife went to the police and filed a child mollestation complaint against the murder victim.

This is the latest example of vigilante justice - people taking the law into their own hands. In one case, a whole community seems to have been complicit in the murder of a town bully. In 1980, Ken Rex McElroy was shot to death by one or more persons while he was stitting unarmed in his truck. McElroy, a giant of a man, had intimidated and terrorized the people of Skidmore, Missouri, and the surrounding area for more than a decade. On one occasion, a Skidmore police officer was frightened off while attempting to arrest the bully. Despite many years of harassing people, McElroy was never brought to justice. His victims refused to cooperate with police and FBI investigators and the case remains unsolved to this day.

In 1984, Gary Plauche ambushed and shot Jeff Doucett in the head at the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, airport while sheriff's deputies were returning Doucett from California for kidnapping and sexually abusing his ten-year old son. Plauche, who had been laying in wait, killed Doucett in front of television news cameras. Doucett, who was Jodie Plauche's karate instructor, had taken the child to California two years earlier. Gary Plauche received five years of probation for killing his son's kidnapper and molester.

Also in 1984, Bernhard Goetz, a victim of two previous muggings, shot four black youths who attempted to rob him on a New York subway. Then he walked up to one wounded mugger and told him "You don't look too bad, here's another," before shooting him again, thereby paralyzing the young man. Goetz claimed he acted in self-defense and was acquitted of attempted murder. The "Subway Vigilante" was convicted of a firearms possession charge and served eight-and-a-half months in jail. The paralyzed youth won a multi-million dollar judgement against Goetz in a subsequent civil trial.

Taking the law into one's own hands can never be justified, no matter what led to the vigilante act and no matter how lenient the courts are perceived to be with criminal defendants. In the Edington case, there is a big question - is a two-year old capable of telling her mother that she has been sexually molested? What if James did not molest the Edington child? In the "Subway Vigilante" case, a justifiable act of self-defense turmed into an unjustifiable act of vigilante justice when Goetz walked up and shot the wounded youth again.

In the Edington and Plauche cases, one can certainly understand the desire for revenge by a very angry father who believes his child has been molested. In the McElroy case, people finally took the law into their own hands after being terrorized for over ten years with no relief from the criminal justice system. After years of neglect, it is certainly understandable why nobody in Skidmore would cooperate with the criminal investigators. While all of us can empathize with Edington and Plauche, and while some of us can cheer for Goetz and the people of Skidmore, the truth is that all of these folks meeted out vigilante justice, thereby depriving James, McElroy, Doucett, and Goetz's victims of their day in court.