Doomed November 17, 2023

 

Even though I’m told he showed no remorse for what he had done at his first sentencing, I can’t help but feel sorry for him, even when I know he did wrong, standing alone with his attorney in a room packed with people who hate him. He would soon lose the rest of his life for having done something so stupid he could never recover from hit or make amends, his attorney with his pigtails, checkered suit, and rings on every finger, brokering the best deal possible to shave off years from a sentence that will likely end his life in jail anyway.

He is as much a victim of his own crime as the people he killed, when – stoned and distracted – his car slammed in the back of theirs, already years ago, though the waves of hate from the other sin the room never wanes, the stares of cops, family members EMTs, firefighters, even court officers, all bearing him their wish for his death which will likely transpire, his hands in chains as he waits for the final number of days, weeks, months and years he will face behind bars – the wife and widow of his victim screaming at him, telling him she wants him to die, to suffer as much as possible during those long years, as judge and the jury of onlookers look unmoved by her hatred, the abuse he must endure because even he knows he's guilty, she murdering him with words, just as he had murdered her husband and child, though her killing is deliberate when he was not, a stupid mistake that might have gone some other way had fate been on his side when clearly it was not.

This is vengeance not justice, even though it occurs in a court of law, a lynch mob without the actual lynching, sanctioned by the authorities who gave him his day in court, then slams the cell door behind him on the rest of his life, a negotiated settlement that shaved off a few precious years, though what he has left won’t make up for what is taken from him.

Rage rules as the judge sits silence, cringing over the widow’s words as much as I do, this part of the healing process that might allow her to get on with her life after losing those who played such a role in it prior to this tragedy, his life for the two lives lost, a testimony so full of fury it shakes the room, humbling him even more than the chains he wears, humbling him in the way Pilate’s judgement must have done Christ, only he is not Jesus, nor even the good thief who plead for salvation on the cross next to God’s.

He who is without sin cast the first tone.

I feel sorry for the widow, but also the man whose action made her a widow, at the fact that one small act can destroy so much for so many and leave so many of those involved in pain – judgement being the final word on justice, when it isn’t just at all


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