how does the passing of time affect your view on what punishment should follow - is it purely a practical concern? (the cost to the taxpayer would apply to everyone in prison)
you have a different view of what justice is but he shouldn't be treated differently because of his age - he is capable of understanding what he is being accused of, why not follow the process which has already dealt with similar scenarios
Justice has to do with the safety of society and rehabilitation of the offender.
In cases of murder, we put people in prison for decades to life in prison depending on the circumstances. Others execute murderers. I don't believe in that.
I doubt any poster here believes that he is still presently a danger to society and I doubt anyone here cares to rehabilitate him.
Thus is falls squarely on the notion of punishment as a form of justice, which I do not agree with. And I'm not the only one who feels that way about it.
We should approach this with more temperament. I brought up the Armenian Genocide and the mistreatment of Native Americans to prove a point.
Stinkles said that we have to punish this person because the event will "inform our culture" that war crimes are unacceptable. It has already been established that they are unacceptable. He also said that we must never forget the atrocities that have been committed.
Now, there was my gripe. We do forget the atrocities that were committed, sometimes willfully. Our memory of history is tainted by politics. World War II is salient in our minds because it has had a spotlight shined on it since it occurred. And because we have a black and white view of the event. It's seen by many as the ultimate fight between good and evil. The Axis Powers are considered evil. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin are all considered evil, and anyone in league with them is evil, right? That's the popularization.
Had they won, the Allied Powers would today be considered evil. The notion of good and evil is too shallow, and it has led many people in this thread to essentially say, "Fuck him, he's a nazi, may he rot in jail/hell."
Our history is tainted by politics. We don't passionately argue for the reclamation of land by Native Americans. We don't passionately argue for reparations for Armenia by Turkey. It's political. And it's unfeasible. What about reparations for African slaves in the United States? Can we feasibly do that? Probably not. Although it was a great injustice, our ability to set it right is no longer there.
We can send this man back to Europe and he'll get a lawyer that will delay proceedings and then we'll discover that the evidence against him is simply not enough to convict him. It will be a big waste of time and money. But it's not just about time and money. It's really a question of why are we doing this? By letting him alone, we're not saying what he did was okay at all.
We're saying that the circumstances don't allow us to achieve justice.
We can attach a label to his name that brands him as a Nazi war criminal. That's something we could do.
Anything more than that will fail. And it won't look good for us, especially if he's acquitted.