Forgiveness and Capital Punishment
Pardon the spoiler, and this is well worth the read, but the man who murdered this family’s matriarch changes his mind about meeting all of them in the state of Florida’s attempts at “restorative justice”. I believe this is a Dear Prudence quip, but “a request is not a request without the possibility of hearing no; otherwise, it’s a command that just happens to be formed as a question.” Of course, a homicide victim’s family deserves ; but the accused is a person with agency and merely a mortal who sometimes will fall short of your own ideas of redemption. The whole point of forgiveness is that is for you; one has to live with the fact that it’s possible you’ll never get the apology or explanation you [think] is deserved. (I pill I struggle to swallow. Alas.)
Still… I CANNOT even imagine the strife and heartache this caused the family.
Perhaps, the US Justice system, as flawed as it is, is designed as it is for good reason. Easy for me to say when I have not faced such harrowing tragedy. Do read.
There are limits to more routine use of restorative justice for murder that may be hard to overcome, no matter the will (or resources) of elected officials like Nelson, not to mention that of activists who have for the past few months been demanding a new ideal of justice. One problem is timing. People accused of crimes have a right to a speedy trial, but families in the early stages of loss are acutely vulnerable and may not be ready to face the person who is responsible. A more philosophical but poignant objection to the method is that the primary victim in a homicide case, the one who could best speak to the crime’s harm and consent to more lenient consequences, can’t do so. That person is gone.
Broadly speaking, restorative justice can never be more than a partway measure to curtail violence, social-justice advocates argue, because, just like traditional prosecution, it happens after the fact. To eliminate the harm that we do to one another, they say, would require national investment in alleviating generational poverty often born of racial segregation and expanding mental-health and drug-addiction treatment, among other things. As Rachel Liles put it, “Restorative justice? Let’s have a country that doesn’t make an Adam Lawson in the first place.”
They Agreed to Meet Their Mother’s Murderer. Than Tragedy Struck Again, by Eli Hager at The Marshall Project.
