Term 3 Week 6 (Blogging assignment)

Can mercy and justice co-exist?
Firstly, I would like to define what these two terms mean. Justice refers to following the law by the book, punishing one for his acts which are considered wrong by the law. Mercy means to  taking into consideration the circumstances of a situation that a person was in when he commits a mistake, giving him a lesser punishment, ultimately forgiving him. Some people find that both cannot co-exist as by showing mercy, justice would not be served as the convicted would be escaping with a lesser lighter sentence as compared to what is demanded of him. However, I believe that both of these two factors are able to co-exist peacefully.

Justice is a subjective term as everyone has different views to how justice should be served. Should we have an eye-for-eye system where each person should be punished according to how each crime was committed? Or should justice refer to punishment based on the circumstances that the crime was committed and its severity? It can be seen that justice has many different sides to it.

For me, I feel that mercy can co-exist with justice based on several factors: Circumstances of the crime and the severity of the crime. If the convicted was caught for committing henious crimes such as mass murder and arson, obviously mercy should not be shown to such criminals and justice should be served as charged. However, in circumstances where the crime is less serious than mercy can be taken into consideration if the person who committed the crime shows remorse for his/her mistakes and is willing to repent. When someone is willing to repent, we would be more willing to forgive and show mercy towards the accused. Also, we should take into account the mental state of the person as he committed the crime, is he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, causing him to be unable to make proper decisions, than mercy can also be taken into consideration.

Hence, at the end of the day, I feel that justice and mercy can co-exist based on the different circumstances of the different crimes that were committed.