Kate Grosmaire keeps asking herself if she has really forgiven Conor. “I think about it all the time,” she said. “Is that forgiveness still there? Have I released that debt?” Even as the answer comes back yes, she says, it can’t erase her awareness of what she no longer has. “Forgiving Conor doesn’t change the fact that Ann is not with us. My daughter was shot, and she died. I walk by her empty bedroom at least twice a day.”
I don't have the time now to respond to this with the fullness that it deserves, but this article was shocking and engrossing in a way I can't say I've ever felt before. It's very common, and very easy, to find atheists online bashing religion and showing the damage it's done. But this seems to be a good thing, a positive step not only for this family but for the criminal justice system which allowed it to happen- and there isn't a hope in hell that this would have come about were it not for the extraordinary belief of those parents, the Grosmaire's. I would be curious to know what other people think about whether this should or should not be more widely practiced. If not with murder cases, then with almost every other kind of crime. It really calls into question the existence and purpose of legal systems.“It was excruciating to listen to them talk,” Campbell says. “To look at the photo there. I still see her. It was as traumatic as anything I’ve ever listened to in my life.”
It's hard to read about this and imagine it. We've all been angry before, and I would be the first to say that at times I'm irrationally angry. But to have it play out in such a way, to have every scrap of it laid bare before you when the anger has passed and the regret lies knee deep... I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I cannot imagine that. I cannot imagine the exceptional, scalding pain of talking in quiet voices with a father whose daughter I shot in the head.
I greatly enjoy the idea of the victim dictating the punishment, guided by the law (and a rep. of the state). That's not what the article was specifically talking about, but it's one of the ideas that came into my mind. Make justice come from the personal, not the abstract.
Victims dictating the punishment of the perpetrator sounds good, but it could easily lead to unintended consequences. Few examples of how things could go south quickly; wealthy or powerful criminals, domestic disputes (especially abusive relationships), statutory rape cases, perpetrators who are family... tons more. There's a reason punishment is dealt out by a third party.