Time for vigilante justice?

OPINION:

“By the People, for the People.” So stated President Abraham Lincoln in his renowned Gettysburg Address. Though he spoke of the government, over 150 years later this speech applies to many parts of American life.

The people need justice. As Americans, we desire it and it should be up to us, the people, to seek it out when the institutions — the government, courts, big wigs and elites — fail us.

There are many examples of the courts, judges or juries — deliberately or inadvertently, through their prejudices and biases — withholding their duties to serve justice to crime victims. Take the American frontier of the 1800s. During the height of the Gold Rush, in 1851, the Committee of Vigilance were formed in California, declaring that the elected government in San Francisco could not adequately protect the lives or well-being of residents.

The vigilantes fought local crime and government corruption, and ended up including 8,000 private citizens. Upon its dissolution in 1856, they formed the People’s Party, which dominated San Francisco politics for a decade afterward.

We have had citizen justice before. During World War II, local draft boards of private citizens were set up to determine the physical and mental health of young men needed for military service in the army. These worked well.

More recently, many private citizens have either prevented mass violence or taken matters into their own hands — or should have. In 2019, gunman Keith Kinnunen opened fire on a Texas church. No one was killed, thanks to volunteer security guard Jack Wilson, who shot and killed the attempted murderer.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who survived and fled the devastating war in Ukraine, was brutally stabbed on the light rail without provocation. She did not die immediately, but begged passersby to help her. No one did; they had been conditioned by corrupt government instead to walk away.

The murderer was Decarlos Dejuan Brown, a racial minority and violent criminal who had been arrested 14 times prior, going back as far as 2007. Brown had broken probation and his criminal record included larceny, breaking and entering and armed robbery.

After stabbing Zarutska in the neck, he reportedly muttered, “I got that white girl” and walked away. He was arrested but was recently deemed to be too mentally incompetent to withstand trial by a judge, also a racial minority.

When O.J. Simpson was found not guilty in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, it split America in two. Those who saw the evidence — including DNA and motive — as proof of Simpson’s guilt viewed the outcome as a miscarriage of justice.

Many of those who believed Simpson not guilty saw the acquittal as “payback” for the Rodney King beating four years earlier. Juror Carrie Bess has cited the King incident as the reason the former football player walked free.

Another juror, Lon Cryer, raised his fist toward Simpson in black power solidarity upon the reading of the verdict. Having a juror brazen enough to admit to racial bias during a major trial’s verdict reading is nothing short of a miscarriage of justice.

Just this month at a Twin Falls, Idaho, In-N-Out Burger, former law-enforcement officer Austin James Scott confronted an armed assailant. In all, four people were killed, but more surely would have been without the quick and heroic actions of Mr. Scott.

The National Rifle Association magazine used to include a monthly section titled “The Armed Citizen.” It was filled with stories of armed citizens who came to the rescue of threatened individuals.

These are just a few examples, and many more can be listed. But one thing is clear: The people, not the corrupt elites, know best. The current system cannot be reformed, only replaced.

There is a false notion among some that vigilante has a bad connotation. In fact, it means “watchman” or “guard,” as derived from its Spanish origins.

If a violent man who had been arrested 14 times and convicted for a number of crimes not been released, would Iryna Zarutska still be alive?

The justice system has failed — deliberately — too many times for American citizens to sit by and do nothing. There must be vigilante justice. Judges, who allow criminals to roam the streets, should fear for their positions and understand the consequences of their actions. IRS agents and other government bureaucrats should quake in fear.

Vigilantism is what the Founders intended. Jefferson said, “When government fears the people. There is liberty.” Washington, in his farewell address, warned that a “free people ought to be constantly awake” to a potentially dictatorial government.

“The Righteous One observes the house of the wicked; he throws the wicked down to ruin. … When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” So reads the Book of Proverbs.

Perhaps, as the government or the courts have failed to bring terror to the evildoers, it is now up to us.

• Craig Shirley is an American historian and author. He has written multiple critically acclaimed books on President Ronald Reagan.