William Lynch

You may recall that I’m not a pro­po­nent of “stand your ground” laws because they tend to encour­age “vig­i­lante jus­tice”. That is, it becomes too easy for some­one to use those laws as cover for becom­ing sole judge, jury, and exe­cu­tioner in retal­i­a­tion for slights, real or imagined.

It is my oppo­si­tion to vig­i­lante jus­tice that led me to be par­tic­u­larly con­cerned about a ver­dict ren­dered last Thurs­day in San Jose, California.

On May 10, 2010, 44-​​year-​​old William Lynch drove roughly 50 miles from his home in San Fran­cisco to the Los Gatos retire­ment home of 67-​​year-​​old Rev­erend Jerold Lind­ner, a for­mer Jesuit priest. Accord­ing to a Santa Clara County Sher­iff spokesper­son, Lynch con­fronted Lind­ner regard­ing alleged sex­ual abuse when Lynch was seven years old. When Lind­ner claimed not to rec­og­nize Lynch, the younger man began beat­ing the retired priest.

Accord­ing to Lynch, when he was seven, he and his then five-​​year-​​old brother were raped by Lind­ner and forced to orally cop­u­late each other. When he became an adult, Lynch attempted to press charges against Lind­ner, but was unable to do so, due to an expired statute of lim­i­ta­tions. In later years, Lynch became an alco­holic, suf­fered from severe chronic depres­sion, and attempted sui­cide on two occa­sions. He suc­cess­fully sued the Jesuits of the Cal­i­for­nia Province in 1998, and reached a $625,000 settlement.

Lind­ner has con­sis­tently denied hav­ing molested the Lynches, but he has been accused of sex­u­ally abus­ing sev­eral oth­ers, includ­ing his sis­ter and nephews. He was removed from his post in 2001 and placed in the retire­ment home, where he has lived since.

Lynch pleaded not guilty in Decem­ber, explic­itly with the goals of expos­ing Lind­ner as a child moles­ter and call­ing atten­tion to the preva­lence of clergy abuse. Dur­ing the trial, he admit­ted to hav­ing delib­er­ately dri­ven to Los Gatos with the intent of con­fronting Lind­ner. He said that he brought a con­fes­sion for Lind­ner to sign, and that Lind­ner refused to sign, and leered at Lynch in the same way he remem­bered from his youth. It was at that point that Lynch pro­ceeded to pum­mel the priest.

Lind­ner ini­tially tes­ti­fied that he did not abuse Lynch, but later invoked his Fifth Amend­ment right against self-​​incrimination. The judge ordered his tes­ti­mony striken from the record.

Last Thurs­day, the jury in Lynch’s trial ren­dered a ver­dict of Not Guilty on two counts of felony assault and elder abuse. The jury dead­locked on a third charge of mis­de­meanor assault; it seems unlikely at this point that Santa Clara County will attempt to retry him.

So what we have here is a man who admit­ted to com­mit­ting vig­i­lante jus­tice, and got away with it. In Lynch’s defense, he admits he fully expected to be con­victed, and was will­ing to serve his sen­tence in exchange for the oppor­tu­nity to expose Lind­ner. My issue is less with Lynch than with the big­ger pic­ture sur­round­ing the story.

And I cer­tainly don’t mean to min­i­mize what Lynch allegedly went through. Nobody should ever have to deal with that sort of behav­ior, par­tic­u­larly from some­one with that much power over them. I do, how­ever, stren­u­ously object to any encour­age­ment of vig­i­lante justice.

The prob­lem with vig­i­lante jus­tice is high­lighted in the way that our judi­cial sys­tem is struc­tured, enshrined in the United States Con­sti­tu­tion. The Sixth Amend­ment states:

In all crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and pub­lic trial, by an impar­tial jury of the State and dis­trict wherein the crime shall have been com­mit­ted, which dis­trict shall have been pre­vi­ously ascer­tained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accu­sa­tion; to be con­fronted with the wit­nesses against him; to have com­pul­sory process for obtain­ing wit­nesses in his favor, and to have the Assis­tance of Coun­sel for his defence.

Those ren­der­ing jus­tice are, by design, dis­pas­sion­ate observers. This design ensures that the aggrieved’s pas­sions don’t inter­fere with find­ing the truth. That is, just because some­one feels that they were wronged doesn’t mean that they were, or, if they were, that they were wronged by the accused party. The accused is per­mit­ted to claim inno­cence and con­front wit­nesses, in no small part to address cases of mis­taken iden­tity. Vig­i­lante jus­tice elim­i­nates this pro­tec­tion, increas­ing the like­li­hood that the wrong per­son is on the receiv­ing end of “justice”.

Fur­ther­more, our sys­tem is designed to fit the pun­ish­ment to the crime. The Eighth Amend­ment states:

Exces­sive bail shall not be required, nor exces­sive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual pun­ish­ments inflicted.

Absent dis­pas­sion­ate observers, it is par­tic­u­larly com­mon for the pun­ish­ment to exceed the crime. For exam­ple, some­one cuts some­one else off on the road, so the aggrieved party shoots and kills the offender. It’s an extreme exam­ple, but one that has occurred on more than one occa­sion. Instead, we have opted for the more enlight­ened model of hav­ing a judge and/​or jury ren­der the pun­ish­ment, so that they are capa­ble of weigh­ing not only the dam­age inflicted upon the aggrieved party, but also mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances of which one dis­pens­ing vig­i­lante jus­tice would be unaware, but which are nonethe­less relevant.

Vig­i­lante jus­tice is a form of anar­chy, and unsuited for our osten­si­bly civ­i­lized soci­ety. So why is it that so many peo­ple cel­e­brated Lynch’s acquit­tal? Is this really the sort of nation that we want to be, where a wronged party can har­bor fan­tasies of revenge for decades, then get away with exact­ing that revenge?

Am I the only one who is trou­bled by this?

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