The True Judgment

Perhaps they were repenting because they hadn't managed to remain good to the end; perhaps they hated themselves for no longer being able to protect their families; perhaps they hated themselves for not being truly wicked.

Wichli Jasiński was even more affected. He shouted, "Long live Vladimir Wuster! You are the pride of the Szlachta!" The other prisoners awaiting execution joined in, their voices rising together in a chorus of tragic defiance.

(The Szlachta were the Polish nobility.)

Just as Vladimir Wuster was about to be treated like a god, Franz hurriedly called off the execution. Suddenly, he felt that the death penalty was too light. Far too light. It simply wasn't enough for a man like this.

He looked at the criminals, their bloodlust roused; then at the executioners, seething with indignation; and finally at the victims, who had once again become lambs led to slaughter.

He made a decision that would get him cursed to death by future legal scholars and human rights academics: torture.

He gave the victims the right to decide. Franz wasn't trying to return to primitive justice and exact an eye for an eye, but he felt that simple, straightforward justice was what they needed most at that moment.

Civilization didn't mean piling on more and more restraints. It meant having prisons without criminals, and torture without anyone being tortured.

The moment the proposal was announced—to let the victims vote on the criminals' sentences—it caused an uproar. Most serfs and commoners couldn't read, which made the criminals burst out laughing. Some even jeered.

"Come on, draw me a bed. I want to lie down and sleep myself to death!"

"No! You should be worked to death! Hahaha!"

But they soon stopped laughing. After a simple vote, the victims chose impalement.

Impalement meant driving a