Skitka and Houston (in press, Study 2) found that if people's desire for vengeance is morally mandated, they have little concern for how their vengeance is achieved. Research participants in this study read about the police investigation and arrest of a man who allegedly killed a young couple in the course of a burglary. Half of the participants learned that the defendant received a fair trial, was convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently died in the electric chair. The other half of the participants learned the same details of the investigation and arrest but learned that the defendant had been shot and killed on his way to trial by a vigilante. When participants had a moral mandate that the defendant should be punished, they reported that the defendant's outcome and the procedure that lead to it were equally fair, regardless of whether it was achieved by fair trial or vigilantism. In short, when people had a moral mandate, due process was an irrelevant concern. Only participants who did not have a moral mandate about defendant guilt or punishment saw vigilantism as significantly less fair than a trial.
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In sum, American citizens appeared to be more concerned that government and legal authorities arrived at their morally mandated outcome than whether the government and legal authorities dignified and respected the involved parties' rights to due process. These results suggest that to the extent that people have embraced the "war on terrorism" as a morally mandated end, they will be prepared to sacrifice any number of procedural safeguards to achieve it.
