If someone had attacked you so violently you ended up paralysed, would it be a fitting punishment for the attacker to be paralysed in return? An eye for an eye, as it were?A man who was left crippled after being hit with a meat cleaver asked a Saudi judge to sentence his assailant to surgical paralysis. The judge is now getting medical advice on whether this would be possible, before he decides what sentence to pass.
The paralysis could be induced by severing the man's spinal cord.
Apart from the question of whether any criminal, however serious the offence, should be subjected to such a gruesome and debilitating punishment, it is extraordinary that the victim should have a say in what punishment is meted out.
In most countries this would be a matter strictly for the judge, precisely because the victim might demand something utterly barbaric.
It is extraordinary too that the traditional "eye for an eye" attitude is still seen as a sensible legal principle. If the real cause of the attack is a fit of uncontrolled anger, how is physical paralysis the solution? Surely it can only breed bitterness and more anger?
I also wonder what surgeon with any conscience or humanity could possibly agree to deliberately paralyse a presumably fit and healthy man, simply because a judge decides it is an appropriate punishment. How could he live with himself afterwards?
