[moneytalks]

Criminal justice attempts to align punishments with the public's sense of fairness, not the other way around.

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.

[nxsynonym]

I see your point, but nobody is saying the time she served wasn't adequate - yet still they want to force punishment.

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.