If On the Jury, I Would Vote to Acquit

A group of German pensioners are on trial for abducting and imprisoning their investment adviser:

A retired architect and four other pensioners took their financial adviser hostage and held him in a purpose-built prison in Bavaria after their stock market investments failed, a court has heard.

The 74-year-old architect, identified only as Roland K, told a court in Traunstein, southern Germany, that he and his accomplices thought their financial adviser had "cheated and taken the piss" out of them after their investments in the US property market evaporated. As a result, he told the court, they had "decided to invite him for a few days' holiday in Upper Bavaria".

Roland K denied kidnapping but admitted the group, including his seventh wife, 79-year-old Sieglinde, Willi D, 60, and Iris F, 64, a retired doctor, abducted James Amburn at his home in Speyer, southern Germany, in June before transporting him in the boot of a car to Roland K's house at the lakeside resort of Chiemsee, where he had built a prison for him in the cellar.

I don't approve of such behavior, and I would not do so myself, but if these sorts of vigilante justice are nullified by juries on a regular basis, bankers will start looking to preserving their skins, and not their bonuses and tax dodges.

If they don't get the message soon, we will see the people with guns shooting bank presidents.

I hope that the bankers get the message before we start seeing widespread murders.