MovieChat Forums > Bully (2001) Discussion > Did the law really NEED to give them str...

Did the law really NEED to give them strong sentences for THAT?


Granted, they did indeed commit murder, and murder is against the law, but the person they killed was someone who was in more ways than one a horrible and truly evil human being. (And apparently according to the book and the true story on which the case was based, he was even worse in reality than he was portrayed as in the movie.)

Given how he constantly humiliated and 'bullied' (hence the title) his arguably "best friend" by constantly hitting him physically and subjecting him to verbal abuse and other manner of hurtful insults that would try a Saint's patience for crying out loud, given how he r*ped/s**ually assaulted at least two young girls (if not more) that would even and rightfully so put him in jail and cause many civilized people to turn away from him, how he allegedly assaulted and apparently nearly killed a few people himself apparently based on what we have heard about him and whatnot...

Why would the LAW be so harsh and punitive as to jail all those men (and women too, Gawd!) for killing him for tens of decades if not for a lifetime and even for a death penalty, given how often police themselves often kill innocent people and get away with it, politicians who killed millions didn't get into any trouble due to power (yeah, our world is so civilized, NOT!) but most importantly, the person they killed was a dangerous and harmful human being himself, so they could at least have given them reduced sentence due to the nature of the crime and not life imprisonment as such, I mean, I could MAYBE understand them receiving a death sentence or a life imprisonment IF say, though God FORBID, if he even DOES exist, in the process of killing him, they shot at a crowd and killed numerous INNOCENT people AS WELL, but that (fortunately) DIDN'T happen, and I wish law ANYWHERE was FAR more civilized in the sense that it didn't punish so severely for killing BAD GUYS.

Yes, I know the law is the law, but it wasn't set in stone for crying out loud, and yet in some places (let's not go TOO much into the gruesome details here though we all know how unfathomably shocking it all of course REALLY is) it is like perfectly legal (and society has NO power WHATSOEVER to alter it, not even a strict grandmother could protest and beat the conscience into these people) to kill and hurt people for things that are not even a crime or all that bad, like wives cheating on their husbands, why don't those people gain some empathy and conscience to kill BAD people INSTEAD if they want to act in a vigilante style for what they believe is "right"? Life makes no sense whatsoever man!

And what if law as such DIDN'T exist and acted in a different way, like, would it be CIVILIZED to let those people get away with killing him then?

And on a slightly different side, did the movie mean to say that, BESIDES legal implications of course, even if he WAS a despicable character in the end, those young men and women were STILL wrong to kill him and do so brutally like that? (Ah, but if just ONE of them SHOT him in the head instead, think of how much legal trouble those other people would've damn avoided.)

reply

We are not omniscient and can't know everything so people are not weighed against one another, we are each responsible for our own actions and law works on evidence (in theory). Basically because the law is not an equation with two sides that can balance.

reply

True, of course. But still...

Come to think of it, though I don't know too much about the real Aileen Wuornos case EITHER for example, but in the movie "Monster" (2003) with Charlize Theron, you had her character at the end, and I'm sure many audiences agreed, highly furious and complaining that they gave her a death sentence for those killings she carried out, given how, if not all, then at least one of them was done in self defense (that we even see), not to mention the fact that she claimed that she was a victim and was abused badly therefore the law should've given her a lesser sentence and a mental hospital instead.

reply

This also kinda makes one question the validity of the tagline "No jury would convict her" for Meir Zarchi's movie "I Spit on Your Grave" (1978).

reply

Bully in 2500, the law decided - "Yeah, the bastard deserves it, we love you all and award you medals of honour and now go buy yourselves cars and houses with multi millions of dollars" and Judge also says "Spit on the grave of that bastard, YEAH" and the whole jury claps.

:) :) :)

And news report - Yay, bullying is coming to an END, how cool is that? :)

reply

Society cannot have vigilante justice. Also, the way Bobby bullied Marty is not illegal, other than punching him. Ideally Bobby would be in jail for rape, but unfortunately he was not prosecuted. Regardless, it is not acceptable to kill someone for doing what Bobby did, and without proof. From a legal perspective, there is no proof Bobby raped Ally or Lisa, so that cannot be used as a justification for his murder.

reply

So in a nutshell, do you still believe they were wrong to murder Bobby even despite all those deeds he has done?

And even if the law does state this, does that mean it is right, I mean ideally, if law operated differently and allowed under some circumstances vigilante justice like this to take place, would society really be worse off it?

reply

And in the end, wasn't this sort of the point of the movie? As in, yeah, the bully character of Bobby was terrible, but vigilante justice exacted upon him like that wasn't right either, and that law should be accepted and respected even if at times, it can also protect bad and violent people who may also break the law like that, but only because the law is meant to be, perhaps, a law that is the same for everyone, and that in our human nature as it is, that's the only way to being civilized, even if at times it means being civilized also to bad people who do wrong and harmful deeds themselves?

reply

I agree, the sentences seem really harsh, however even watching the real life documentary may be we dont have all the infos of what the bully did and all his actions

reply

The reason is that the courts have removed the ability of a defendant to use the concept of jurynulification. Originally our system of a jury trial had at its very center the concept of jurynulification wherein a jury always had the ability to say, "yes we know they broke the law, but in this instance the law is wrong and they should not be punished so we will find them not guilty"... that has pretty much been removed as much as possible by judges that will continually trumpet the same bullshit instructions to the jury that they must ignore how they feel about whether a law is right or wrong and make a decision based on the facts and the instructions given by the court. In a perfect world a defendant would be able to make a defense of jurynulification by admitting that they did whatever crime they were accused of, in this case murder, but claim that circumstances in the case justified the murder and that they sought jurynulification to exempt them... then simply tell their rationale for why they did what they did and shouldn't be punished at which point the jury would either agree or not and if not there would be no appeals because the defendant had already admitted guilt and was simply hanging their hope on a jury saying it was okay.

reply

Interesting thanks for the write up, basically all black or all white, no grey allowed.

reply

Good, thanks.

reply

This was a movie. You don't know if the real guy was that bad. You're getting one side of it. Plus, they should've just stopped hanging out with him, not murdering him. There was no excuse!

reply

It's Florida? that state has too many people going in and out of prison. The sentences are NOT long enough. That and a great stock of defense lawyers who know how to win.

The state DID take care of the Oba Chandler case.

reply

Martin Puccios death sentence was changed into a life sentence.
And Ali and Derek are out of jail.

reply

In the end though, do we all feel that the "victim" deserved to be killed? Or is it rather - yes he was bad and did terrible things and even some that are illegal and ruined lives, but not just legally but also MORALLY, those people had stepped over the line and that ultimately they were wrong as well, right?

reply

Not sure if you've read the book, but I think it was the planning and brutality of the killing, and how half the group just went along for the ride. Killing someone just for something to do.

Regardless of what Bobby had done to some of them, it was judged as premeditated first-degree murder, in a state that had the death penalty.

reply

OK, so its also the fact that - some of the people who participated in the act of killing did so not out of any justified sense of vengeance, and to those people, Bobby personally didn't do anything bad to himself.

But didn't some of them get PAID to kill him as well, so maybe they did it for the money too?

reply

No money was exchanged. Derek wasn't actually in the Mafia, and some of the gang were surprised that no 'arrangement' was ever discussed.

reply