Justice (part two)

Justice (part two)

I had not planned on writing about the Christian/Newsom murders. The story has been prominent in the Knoxville news for two and a half years, and it’s been hard for many people to hear the details and see the pain on the families faces. It’s been difficult for me as well, but I have not been able to look away.

I have watched interviews with the parents and seen the anger and frustration in Channon Christian’s fathers eyes. As a father of daughters, I can relate, and fortunately, I can only imagine what he is feeling. What any of them are feeling.

My intention was to swallow my thoughts on this subject. Partly for fear that my disgust and anger over the crime would be too raw, and partly because there’s been so much written and talked about on this subject locally that I wasn’t sure I had anything else to say.

At the end of this week, however, another story broke that got me thinking about what it means to be safe and to keep our families safe in America. After 18 years, the search for kidnapped Jaycee Dugard ended when she was found as a captive of Phillip Garrido, a convicted rapist who had taken her at age eleven and has since fathered two daughters by her.

Much like Channon Christian and Chris Newsom, young Jacee Dugard was doing nothing more than the mere act of existing when her path happened to cross the predator Garrido and his wife. Waiting at a school bus stop, like so many thousands of children do each day, she should have been safe. She should have had nothing more to worry about than how much homework her math teacher gave or if that cute boy she likes just might like her too.

Again, this is a crime in which more than one holds blame, and despite the fact that Garrido seemed to control his wife, she had opportunity and obligation to stop him from his deeds, yet did not. I can predict her excuse now, as she cries in court, that she was a victim too. She will no doubt say that she loved him and lived in fear of him. She will plead for mercy. My heart does not bleed for her.

More bothersome questions arise as more is learned about Garrido and his past. He was sentenced in 1977 to a 50 year prison sentence for the kidnap and rape of a casino worker (in the same town where Jacee Dugard lived), yet despite telling authorities that he could only enjoy sex if there was violence involved, he served only eleven years. Three years after his release, he kidnapped Jacee.

What excuses do we have as a society? What do we say to the now 29 year old Jacee Dugard as we try to explain what she has missed during her eighteen years of captivity? Do we simply say, “You know, with prison overcrowding, we can’t keep criminals in jail forever!” Or do we say, “according to the percentages, and the two hours of court appointed therapy he attended, we believed Mr. Garrido had been rehabilitated.”

The truth is, until it touches our own families, we don’t usually care. We might shake our heads when we watch the news, and say how awful it is when someone is raped or killed, but it’s really just too much effort to get involved with changing the system. We’ll get furious over taxes, because that affects our wallet and pocketbook. We might go to a town hall meeting or a tea party. We’ll scream and shake our fists because we just can’t believe someone would do something we don’t agree with. But when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of our nations children, we hold our tongue.

Churches and conservative groups across our nation stage protests and place little white crosses on their lawns to show their outrage at the rate of abortions, but oddly grow silent once those rescued fetuses are born, as if their responsibility to their life ended at birth. Concern and protection should not stop at the first breath.

Liberals are even worse, so concerned with the rights of the criminals that we have been forced to forfeit the most basic human right of safety. If there is even the slightest evidence of a clerical mistake on the behalf of the police, the ACLU will seek to overturn a conviction and release a proven murderer. These actions are always justified as a way of upholding the law, but what good is the law if justice is foresaken?

Our society has shown more concern for nearly extinct slug worms than it has for the safety of our children. Stronger laws are on our books for some forms of tax evasion and treason than there are for murder and rape. What is our logic? Why can we not get this right? It seems fairly straightforward to me: If you are convicted of rape, kidnap or murder, you lose your rights to play amongst the rest of us. If you are convicted of rape, kidnap or murder of a child, you lose the right to breath.

Somehow we have allowed our judicial system to twist and turn the law into a nearly incomprehensible maze of legal jargon. As I listened to the charges read by the judge in the Christian/Newsom trial, I wondered how the jury would ever understand what they were legally supposed to do. Obviously, they were confused as well, finding the defendant guilty of first degree murder but not imposing the maximum punishment.

Possibly there were too many loopholes, too many “if this, then that” options. Why have we found it necessary, as we continue to become more “civilized,” to feel the need to classify everything? If someone murders, then there has to be an excuse, some sad story of justification that explains how this poor soul made such a tragic mistake. It’s the parent’s fault, or drugs, or gangs…anything but the horrible truth that none of us like to face: that we alone are responsible for our actions and no one else.

(continued in part three)