History Main / NoAdequatePunishment

* ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'': The episode "Best Laid Plans" has Will trying to dupe a girl into thinking they are married in order to have sex with her. It is behaviour so bad that Uncle Phil can't think of a punishment for him..., yet.
-->'''Uncle Phil:''' I'm not going to punish you, Will.
-->'''Will:''' ...You know, that's radical, Uncle Phil, but it just might work.
-->'''Uncle Phil:''' I'm not going to punish you today. Maybe not even tomorrow. You see, I need to think a long, long time about just what I'm going to do to you. I don't know, if might come to me in the middle of the night, or maybe next week, or a few years from now. In the meantime, why don't you worry about it? Be afraid, Will (seizes Will by his lapel and pulls him close). [[DissonantSerenity Be ''very'' afraid]].

* ''WebComic/TheOrderOfTheStick'': Vaarsuvius killed a quarter of all black dragons, [[spoiler:and everyone related to them, including innumerable humans, including the entire Draketooth family.]] Roy tells V that he's incapable of either counseling or judging the elf. And when V insists, Roy goes into detail as to ''why'' he can't advise the elf: The legal issues would take an ''army'' of lawyers to sort out, and morally/ethically, the harm V caused would likely defy any price V would be capable of paying.

* {{Implied|Trope}} in ''[[Literature/SkeletonCrew The Jaunt]]'' by Creator/StephenKing regarding a man who shoved his wife into a PortalDoor with no exit coordinates. He tried to argue that he couldn't be tried for murder because there was no proof that the woman was dead, but the jury considered how [[AndIMustScream infinitely worse it would be if she wasn't]] and ordered his execution anyway.

* The Hanar of ''Franchise/MassEffect'' apparently had no idea what to do when Jack {{Colony Drop}}ped a space station onto their moon hard enough to make a new crater, and so they just charged her with "vandalism" instead -- the same kind of charge one would get for breaking a couple windows, which makes it stand out on her ListOfTransgressions as being a case of PokeThePoodle.

* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'': The Norscans punish unlawful killings with a [[BuyThemOff fine of wergild]]. Every class of society incurs its own death-price, except for Seers and Vitki -- it is completely forbidden by the Chaos Gods to do them harm, and only the wrath of the Gods settles the debt.

* In Canada, Gillian Guess had sex with gangster Peter Gill ''while serving as a juror in his trial'', which didn't have a specific law against it because [[WhoWouldBeStupidEnough no legislator had imagined that a juror would do something that stupid]]. They eventually nailed her on a generic "obstruction of justice" charge. Incidentally, while she got Gill off on his own trial[[labelnote:*]]In more ways than one[[/labelnote]], [[JusticeByOtherLegalMeans he was later convicted of obstruction of justice for screwing Guess]].

* In the ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends Literature/JediAcademyTrilogy'', Kyp Durron stands trial for destroying a solar system. Mon Mothma acknowledges that while this makes him a mass murderer on par with the Emperor, there is no adequate law in the New Republic books to punish such a crime. Not helping is that he was under the influence of the ancient Sith lord Exar Kun ([[ItMakesSenseInContext long story, don't ask]]) which muddies the question of if he was even in control of his actions. Mon Mothma declares that the only person who could make a proper judgement is the ranking Jedi master, Luke Skywalker. The later novel ''I, Jedi'' explored some of the ''massive'' problems with this decision.

* In ''[[Literature/WorldOfTheFiveGods The Curse of Chalion]]'' attempting to use death magic to kill someone is punished by execution. However, ''successfully'' using death magic to kill someone carries no penalty, since successful death magic '''a)''' is technically a "death miracle", and thus sanctioned by the gods, and '''b)''' [[EquivalentExchange kills the spellcaster along with their victim]], so it's not like you ''could'' punish them even if you wanted to. When Cazaril manages to survive performing death magic, it's acknowledged that ''in theory'' he's committed no crime, but that might not protect him if the information became public.

* Played for laughs in ''Literature/AgathaHAndTheVoiceOfTheCastle''. Professor Merlot claims that his sentencing to Castle Heterodyne, a death-trap strewn castle run by an insane and sadistic AI that thinks it is funny, to be inappropriate for what he did, which was to try to cover up secrets discovered in some of his previous employer's encrypted archives by burning the archives and ''the cryptographers''. The footnotes then state that since the burned archives likely included the final volumes of the personal journals of Barry Heterodyne, and thus all records of what the Heterodyne Boys had been up to since they disappeared during the Other Wars, historians agree that the punishment was not fair, but more appropriately harsh punishments had been outlawed by this point.