Greatest Saviors or Gravest Sinners?

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” The inscription of this phrase into the Old Testament in the Law of Lex Talionis describes a human desire as old as time: revenge. Nearly every religion around the globe has acknowledged this impulse and utilized divine influence as a moral restraint. Egyptian mythology presents Sekhmet as the goddess of vengeance, the Greeks pray to Nemesis for divine retribution, and Judeo-Christians rely on God to balance the scales of justice.

Nevertheless, vigilantism has circulated headlines for years, suggesting a resurfacing of one the most violent human desires. With the media focusing on an ever failing justice system and crime rates on the rise, many individuals feel the urge to take matters into their own hands and deliver their version of justice. Amplifying this movement is the public’s new fascination with it, with shows like “Dexter” and “The Arrow” showcasing vigilantism as a necessary evil.

Rise of Vigilantism

That may have been the case 150 years ago, when America was still a developing nation, lacking proper institutions for holding criminals and controlling their activity. Local sheriffs could only do so much with limited technology and a sparsely settled terrain swimming with outlaws. From slavery-supporting radicalists in the South to bandits in the Wild West, sheriffs were often outnumbered in their efforts to stop crime. In turn, independent justice groups sprung up all over the country, using death as one of the few punishments for a crime.

Despite good intentions, at least 326 vigilante movements swept the nation in the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in over 700 unauthorized executions in the Western region of the United States alone. The last decades of the 19th century only worsened the body count, as angry lynch mobs publicly staged nearly 5,000 executions, a number rumored to exceed the amount of court-ordered executions at the time.

With constantly evolving technology and new forms of crime, vigilantism and its followers have branched out into new mediums. Originally defined by Merriam Webster as “member[s] of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily,” vigilantes now bring to light discreet criminal activity, perform acts of revenge, and punish those who are the product of a flawed judicial system, while using illegal tactics to achieve a verdict.

Many who commit acts of vigilantism are frustrated with their judicial system. They believe they know who the assailant in a crime is, but due to a lack of evidence or other hindering factors, the police force is unable to act on such suspicions. Perpetrators of vigilantism often resort to stalking, trespassing, hacking, or in extreme cases, even assault and murder to achieve their goals, largely without a legal process to back their actions or provide a verdict. Such factors increase the supposed success rate of vigilantes, making the media portray them as an effective approach to dealing with crime. Unfortunately, this portrayal is an illusion as vigilantism falls incredibly short of being a tangible replacement for a judicial system.

Consider the example of Brad Willman, a 19-year-old living in the UK who identified over 70 pedophiles with nothing but his computer. He created a virus disguised as a file of child pornography that, when opened, gave him full access to a computer’s database. Once Willman would find a sufficient amount of evidence, he would turn over the pedophile’s identity to watchdog groups of pedophile hunters on the Internet. Such groups would typically proceed to get in touch with local authorities, who launched their own investigations.

Now, the identification of pedophiles is certainly valuable; the benefit of corner-cutting in the legal system to destroy a worldwide community of child predators is difficult to challenge. In an ideal scenario, all acts of vigilantism would be that way—twisting the law for the well-being of the people. Unfortunately, Willman’s case is somewhat of an anomaly; he is one of the few recognized vigilantes who was never wrong in his identification of criminals and whose deeds are approved by the majority of society. Less tech-savvy individuals, on the other hand, tend to base their accusations on rumors or vague descriptions and carry out their rage physically.

Bijan Ebrahimi arrived in Britain in 2013 as a disabled refugee unable to work. His property soon fell victim to vandalism by teens, whom he promptly took pictures of in hopes of getting compensation and justice through the police. However, he was arrested on charges of pedophilia and was brought to jail while onlookers chanted “pedo, pedo.” That night, after being wrongfully accused, Ebrahimi was beaten and set on fire by his next door neighbor.

Condoning vigilantism based on cherry-picked success stories while denying the tragic and wrongful murder of Bijan Ebrahimi is intolerable. Regardless of his race, gender, or immigration status, Ebrahimi was an innocent man whose death could have been prevented if his neighbor didn’t turn to vigilantism as an outlet for his fear.

Discovering pedophiles through vigilantism is evidently a double-edged sword. Vigilantes have the potential to uncover criminal behavior, but because they operate outside of the justice system, they can easily misidentify their targets and cause incredible harm. Innocent people fall victim to the rage of vigilantes, losing their lives and reputations in the process. Vigilantes must understand that plunging themselves into an ongoing investigation or attempting to start one often compromises the more regulated work of the police. Crime scenes are tampered with and suspects are brutally murdered, thus denied their fundamental rights of due process and fair trial. Combined with homicides, breaking and enterings, kidnappings, and assaults, the actions of vigilantes make them criminals, not saviors.

The Downfall of Democracy

Even so, vigilantism exists around the world under slightly different circumstances. Most cases do not revolve around hacking or pedophilia—some are fueled by the government itself. While campaigning for presidency, current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte promised to “kill so many criminals, fish will grow fat.” According to recent reports, he seems to be fulfilling his promise, as over 1,800 people have been executed without being proven guilty, sending Duterte’s approval rates up. His version of “war on terrorism” is the murder of criminals, gangs, and drug dealers.

However, Duterte’s endorsement of killing suspected criminals has made the police force follow his example and ultimately defeat its own purpose; a symbol of law, order, and justice now views citizens as guilty without a chance of being proven innocent. Murder becomes the only punishment for crimes of various degrees and takes the lives of countless innocent individuals, all with families, loved ones, and friends. Duterte’s summon for extrajudicial killings in 2016 claimed the life of Maria Aurora Moynihan, the daughter of British Baron Antony Moynihan, transforming the first high profile victim into a statistic. The death of Maria Moynihan made global headlines and drew heavy scrutiny and attention toward the Philippine government. In response to the human rights abuse allegations that soon followed, Duterte threatened to withdraw from the UN.

Duterte’s extrajudicial agenda soon expanded to slums and poor communities throughout the Philippines. Nightly drug raids committed by masked shooters became a weekly, if not daily occurrence, along with the appearance of bodies lining the streets. In some parts of the Philippines, such as Tagum, Mindanao, police are even encouraged to kill petty criminals and street children as part of their crackdown on crime. As a result, the only response to violence becomes violence, trapping countries like the Phillipines in an endless cycle of killings.

Larger scale vigilantism as demonstrated in the Philippines undermines one of the most essential parts of a democracy: an individual’s right to due process and the applicacy of the rule of law. Such grievances can escalate to the president extending his powers into other branches of government and transforming it into an autocracy. While this may appear as a worst case scenario and many argue this is hardly relevant to vigilante hacking or uncovering pedophilia, it becomes impossible to bolster one side of vigilantism without justifying the other.

Until the Philippines, vigilantism has only been portrayed as a series of actions committed without legal backing. An obsession with a refined and democratic government in the United States has prevented the Philippine chaos from domestic occurrence and shaped the public view of vigilantism as an operation solo from the state. Yet the Philippines are a prime example of a country that goes against this view, as their government places a vigilante bandaid over their deteriorating justice system and endorses extrajudicial violence. To limit vigilantism to what occurs in first world countries alone is sheer denial. Thus, if the Philippines and countries with a similar stance on vigilantism have taught others anything, it’s that vigilantism takes the lives of the innocent, strips people of their rights, and leads any government downhill.

America, Land of the Legal Vigilantes

As chilling as those last words may sound, they ring true for every nation, including ours. While America may pose as a pioneer of freedom and innovation in the 21st century, several of its laws are controversial and outdated. At the top of the list sits the Stand Your Ground law, a self-defense law introduced in 2005 allowing a person to use violence to defend themselves or their property if they feel threatened. This law has received heavy backlash; the legal ambiguity and subjective nature of one “feeling threatened” and the urge to retaliate has created a “shoot first” approach to dealing with crime. Individuals also possess the right to decide when their property is under attack; as obvious as that could seem, dozens of cases have arose with misinterpretations on behalf of the defendants, highlighting why violence should never be one’s first choice. Still, this law has run into other obstacles, including many individuals pleading self-defense while on trial for a homicide, taking legal punishment into one’s own hands, and violently acting upon racial profiling.

One of the most controversial examples of the Stand Your Ground law was the trail of State of Florida v. George Zimmerman, bringing into question whether Zimmerman was responsible for the second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin. Seventeen-year-old Martin was walking back from the store while on the phone with his girlfriend on February 26, 2012, carrying Skittles and iced tea—no weapon. Zimmerman took notice of Martin, a person of color, and proceeded to call 911 to report a suspicious person. The dispatcher told Zimmerman not to engage and that deputies were on their way. Zimmerman proceeded to follow Martin, who could be heard via audio recording asking why Zimmerman was following him. According to Zimmerman’s account, Martin proceeded to attack him, prompting Zimmerman to act in self defense by firing several fatal shots at Martin. Neighbors reported that moments before his death, Martin was shouting for help.

Zimmerman was declared not guilty of the murder of Trayvon Martin on July 13, 2013, sparking nationwide fury. Dozens of protests and demonstrations showed the public’s discontent with the ruling of a crime initiated by a racist judgment call. More so, Zimmerman deliberately went against the directions of a 911 dispatcher and violently acted on his own agenda. Though Zimmerman pleaded self-defense on basis of the Stand Your Ground law, it is worth analyzing who was really defending themselves: an unarmed black teen walking home from the store, or an armed 28-year-old man with a history of domestic violence who went against “do not engage” orders?

Such cases are more common than one may think, but rarely do they make front page news. The Stand Your Ground law has allowed people to legally kill others and walk free even if the circumstances of the crime are unclear. What is clear, however, is that the Stand Your Ground law is also legal vigilantism, as it allows one to violently occupy the role of law enforcement, even if there are other, safer options at hand.

At the moment, 33 states have a form of the Stand Your Ground law, which should be altered; instead of allowing the undefined criteria to apply to every case presented as self-defense, individual states should whittle down the Stand Your Ground law to a more specific and refined version, covering aspects overlooked by the general law. For instance, Florida’s 776.012 clause on self-defense states that “a person is justified in using deadly force (and does not have a duty to retreat) if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony or to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to him or her self [...].”

Though some criteria are given for the usage of deadly force, the prevention of a forcible felony or serious harm to oneself does not apply to the case of State of Florida v. Zimmerman. For future cases, stricter investigations of whether a threat was truly present would make the law less violent and allow for safer forms of crime-stopping to take place. This involves highlighting the presence of a weapon or a visible disadvantage between perpetrator and victim, along with a moral questioning of how necessary death was to prevent the crime. By making the law less vigilante-friendly, hundreds of deaths can be avoided and criminals incarcerated. That, rather than violence at anyone deemed threatening, would serve true justice.

Vigilante justice is evidently a complex issue. It encompasses government corruption, self- defense, felonies, and online security breaches. In a time where many third world countries exercise vigilante justice, it is crucial to decide whether the pros outweigh the cons. On one side, everyday people are able to occupy the role of law enforcement, catch criminals, and perhaps make the world a safer place. But on the other, untrained individuals make assumptions and act upon such assumptions with incredible violence, leaving the question of how “safe” vigilantism is up for debate.

The Dawn of a Vigilante-Free Era

But perhaps the most overlooked aspect of vigilantism is one of its most common motives: dissatisfaction with present judicial institutions.Yet, while cases where the government has engulfed and is contributing to the corruption of the judicial system may be much more complex, domestic vigilantism can be helped.

Presently, the criminal justice system in the United States is flawed. Obvious racial bias towards people of color, bribery and the general leniency towards big money, and the vast discrepancies of punishments for a crime (as seen in the infamous 2016 case of Stanford student Brock Turner) barely scratch the surface of problems in the American justice system. But even then the list goes on, as the police force is also subjected to the same, if not higher problems. According to a study conducted by University of Michigan Law School professor Samuel Gross, one in 25 people on death row are innocent.

Many such cases are contributed to via false confessions, harsh interrogation tactics, and the objectivity of the police—it’s the police force that determines which leads to follow, witnesses to believe, and ultimately what direction they take the investigation to. The trust put into the police force for catching criminals is also concerning; The Washington Post states that the FBI acknowledged a two-decade period before 2000 where almost every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimonies in nearly 260 trials, 32 of which ended in a death sentence. How can the country have complete faith in its judicial system and police force after an organization as powerful as the FBI admitted to such damning actions?

Fixing these issues is a daunting task that the country as a whole must undertake. While past mistakes on behalf of the government cannot be erased, a visible effort toward prosecuting corrupt police officers, instituting reforms against police brutality/racial injustice, and standardizing punishments for the same crimes will likely start to rebuild the trust Americans put in their legal system. In doing so, the United States will not only start to restore public faith, but also decrease the rates of vigilante justice by removing one of the main motives vigilantes have for their actions. Putting an end to vigilantism requires more than just that; another basis vigilantes have is simply uncontrollable rage and a lust for physical means of justice, an “eye for an eye” mentality that gets out of hand. Terminating personal motives and putting a leash on the desire for revenge will not come from reforming the judicial system, but from reforming the way pop culture views vigilantes, ending their glorification, and just as importantly, increasing awareness of vigilante cons.

In heavily covered cases of vigilante justice, attention should be diverted from the vigilante themselves and instead onto the other criminals in the investigation, highlighting how morally and legally wrong their actions were. News coverages should end their reports with notes as to why the vigilante was in the wrong for committing their crimes and how all suspicions should have been turned over to the authorities. Similarly, reminding the public of the entire scope of vigilantism, including government corruption, misidentification, racial profiling, infringement of personal rights, and blatant murder, will discourage and criminalize future vigilantes in pursuing vengeance. After all, one cannot condone vigilantism on a case-by-case basis, and must accept that acts of vigilantism are inimical to the well-being of society.