"Screw the mindset. That's a part, but not a huge part, of the law."

::sigh:: But it's becoming an increasingly important part: "But I didn't meeeeeaaaan to do it..."

This strongly appeals to two groups: the moral relativists, who live so far away from reality that they seem to think the kid's lack of intention to break the window means the wind is frustrated by the intact glass, and the trial lawyers, who now have an infinite number of nit-picking alternatives to bill for.

Actually, I think Walker is highly likely to adopt the Twinkie Defense, 21st Century version: "I was compelled to do it by my culture's lack of moral instruction." Very modern-lawyerly, in that it's quite true on one level, but needs a lot of very careful bullshitting explicative reasoning to establish, at $XXXX.00 per hour.

Yes, like any Red-Blooded Ammuric'n, he has the right -- say, rather, the power -- to be in any place, and do any thing, that his own budget (monetary, timely, and/or psychic) will enable him to reach. What he does not have is a free pass -- he is not immune to the consequences of his choices. Wails of I didn't mean it! and I was just playing! and the like are not exonerative.

And you do misunderstand at least part of my meaning. God made me do it, as applied to killing, is a lie, whoever emits it, and a blasphemous one. God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent [sez so right there on the label, as R. Heinlein pointed out], and the notion that He/She/It/Dzhrz requires thugs and enforcers is IMO blasphemy, more or less by definition. On the other hand, if the atheists are correct, such people are arrogating to themselves a power no one can have by right; in the absence of a Deity, the word "blasphemy" is a null and therefore can be applied in a new meaning. Saves making up sounds.

The challenge of the John Walker case is only indirectly about the man himself. There exists an organization, a group of people, whose self-stated aim is to kill, enslave, or imprison all who do not belong to their organization. Mr. Walker has joined that organization and apparently been accepted by it. Is this an acceptable way out? Even though the tenets and beliefs of the organization are diametrically opposed to the [ideal version of] our own? Is the correct way to defuse this threat "can't beat 'em, therefore join 'em"? Our own views include the notion of "punishment", which in many cases verges on revenge; are those notions applicable in this case?

In my opinion it would be better simply not to examine those questions, and go at it from a much more limited viewpoint. Does John Walker himself pose a future threat to our way of life, or to members of our society? If the answer is "yes", the correct approach is to remove the possible threat, by whatever method we can afford -- and yes, the "cost" includes the damage to our own ideals caused by such methods as, e.g., summary execution or torture, but the "future threat" part must also include the likelihood that others will use him as an example worthy of emulation at acceptable cost.

That last clause [of an extraordinarily complex sentence!] admits of attack on two fronts: "worthy of emulation" and "acceptable cost". The current set of charges essentially trivializes what Walker and the people he joined regard as the central part of the case; we aren't charging him with the rather existential and philosophical crime of treason, he's charged with the more concrete offense of killing people. If we can now show that his fate is too costly to emulate for such a trivial return, possibly others will avoid that emulation.

So far as I can see there is no other approach to "punishment" that's supportable.