I always thought that the statement "give the devil the benefit of law" meant that we should be especially careful to follow the law to the letter, __even__ whe

I always thought that the statement "give the devil the benefit of law" meant that we should be especially careful to follow the law to the letter, __even__ when dealing with people that we think Deserve To Be Punished (because they're bad! They're evil!), because doing otherwise is a slippery slope towards treating other people with less than the utmost care for following the rules.