Sometimes It Is Difficult to Distinguish Victims from Villains
But real-life confrontations do not consistently gen- erate simple clear-cut cases that neatly fall into the dichotomies of good and evil, innocence and guilt. Not all victims were weak, defenseless, unsuspect- ing “lambs” who, through tragic or ironic circum- stances or just plain bad luck, were pounced upon by cunning, vicious “wolves.” In some instances, observers may have reasonable doubts and honest disagreements over which party in a conflict should be labeled the victim and which should be stigma- tized as the villain. These complicated situations dramatize the need for impartiality when untan- gling convoluted relationships in order to make a rational argument and a sound legal determination that one person should be arrested, prosecuted, and punished, and the other defended, supported, and assisted. Unlike the black-and-white examples