How much the victim suffers...

[BloodyHellSausage]

I'm coming up with my own ideas about how a criminal justice system could be like, and one thing I'm concerned about is how much the victim suffered.

You may have read my previous post about how in a hostage situation, for example, instead of having one person face the threat of death all alone, and die lonely, my idea was that the hostage takers could recieve a relatively lighter sentence if they took two friends as hostages. Psychologists say people need human contact, that's why solitary confinement is considered "inhumane."

I don't know what you would choose, but if I had to choose between having a knife plunged into me while the killer screams, or being gently poisoned by a stony-faced killer, I think I'd choose the latter. Criminal justice systems might call the latter "premeditated murder," or "first-degree murder," and the former a "crime of passion," and punish the latter with a lighter sentence. Criminal justice systems might also call murder by poisoning "first-degree murder," I don't know how painful death by poisoning usually is, but if the poison caused little to no pain, I personally think that's a little ridiculous. Being slaughtered with a knife would be terribly painful, I would imagine.

I think this could be potentially used in a worldbuilding context, but I'm not sure.

 

[CupofJoe]

You can build a justice system anyway you want for your own writing. I tend to stick to something real world[ish] and then think how it could handle magic, non-humans or whatever differs. There was a recent discusion on the very forum about weregeld... the cost of someone's life that had to be paid, so that is making an appearence somehwere soon.
In the real world, I think it is intent that matters, so killing someone in a fight outside a bar with an unluck blow is seen as lesser than going to the same bar with a baseballbat and waiting for someone to come out... Same for choosing someone less able to protect themselves. Some places put a premium on if a weapon was used and what type it was.
Some societies have valued children as more and less than adults, some people, some professions as more and less valuable than others. But in just about all cases the victims did not chose to be killed.