What an eye-opening experience that was! It’s not a time I’m likely to forget. That was when I came to realize we’re not all the same and we don’t all get treated the same in substantially similar circumstances. Now I wonder how differently things might have turned out if I’d been black, and the car in the story I told you earlier had been filled with African-Americans instead of a bunch of white boys.
When I got out of college, I went to work for a small company developing programs for computer systems. Then, about ten years ago, I started my own software business. It was a struggle at first, but then things started going quite well. And then there’s now, but I won’t dwell on that. We changed strategies a couple of years ago, focusing more on Internet transactions. The company is called Internet Plus.
I suppose you’re wondering where I’m going with all of this. Well, I’m going to our justice system—or our injustice system—depending which side of the tracks you’re from.
Throughout my youth, the criminal justice system was just something that was there. It was like so many other things in life we take for granted. I believed the system worked and never gave a thought that maybe it didn’t. Except for my brief run-ins with the police, I never gave much thought to the criminal justice system or what it was supposed to do. I didn’t, that is, until last year. That’s when I decided to get involved and took the initiative to learn as much as I could. You see, one of my employees, Donnie Larson, got into trouble about a year ago. It was that trouble that landed him in prison and got me interested in justice.
Donnie and his wife Barbara had a disagreement one evening. Well, I guess to put it more accurately, they had a fight—a really serious fight. It was completely unlike any argument they’d had before. Donnie was livid. Rather than let the argument continue out of control, Donnie jumped in his car, thinking he’d drive his frustrations out.
Donnie admits he wasn’t paying attention and that he was going a lot faster than the law allowed. He was flying down a quiet country road and missed a stop sign. The sign was partially blocked by foliage and Donnie swears he didn’t see it. Suffice it to say that he sped into the intersection without stopping. Unfortunately, a father, mother, and their three-year-old daughter were entering that intersection at the same time. Donnie broadsided them. The mother and daughter died as a result of their injuries—the mother was killed instantly and the little girl died several days later. Donnie didn’t see them, and they never saw him. The father survived, but he was seriously injured and remained in the hospital for several months.
Donnie is a really good person and a hard worker. He’s the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back. I’m not much for platitudes, but it’s true. He’s a gentle, compassionate and caring man. He’s a good husband and a loving father, a good neighbor, friend and citizen. He’d never deliberately do anything to hurt someone. In this case, he got caught up in the moment and did something really stupid. He caused the accident and went to prison for it.
It was when Donnie was convicted and ultimately sentenced that I started thinking. Here’s a person who had everything going for him, and now he’s incarcerated. I understand that two people died and another was seriously injured, and I understand Donnie has to be held accountable. What I don’t understand is why being accountable translates into going to prison. Donnie knows he’s responsible and he believes strongly in accountability. He’s accepted his punishment and hasn’t complained about his sentence. He worries about his family, but he doesn’t make excuses for what happened.
I’ve been asking myself how things could’ve turned out this way. This is a good man who could be doing a lot for the community. Instead, he’s sitting in a six-by-eight-foot cell, wasting away and accomplishing nothing of consequence for himself or anyone else.
I went to the courthouse every day during Donnie’s trial, intently watching every facet of the proceedings. It was one of the most gut-wrenching experiences of my life. Mr. Elliot, the father of the family in the accident, sat by himself in the back of the courtroom. He always looked sullen, tired, and worn. He’d just sit there staring at the back of Donnie’s head. Day after day he sat there, biting at his lip, hurling daggers at Donnie through angry, red, water-filled eyes.
I remember the day the jury returned with the verdict. “Your Honor,” the foreperson said, “On count one of the indictment, Reckless Homicide, we the jury find the defendant guilty; on count two of the indictment, Reckless Homicide, we find the defendant guilty; and on count three, Causing Serious Injury by Reckless Conduct, we find the defendant guilty as charged.”
I watched Mr. Elliot collapse into a writhing mass of agony. He tore at his hair and clothing and bit his lips together so hard they lost their color. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to stifle the grotesque, guttural grunts of despair that seemed to ooze from his very soul. At the same moment, as if she were a distant reflection, Barbara—sitting immediately behind her Donnie—mirrored the anguish emanating from the back of the room.
I couldn’t help visualizing a tangled mass of blood-soaked hair, rent and bruised flesh surrounded by raggedly torn metal and broken glass. I could see two once-vital people—a mother and her child—beautiful, loved and loving, lying motionless, dead and dying, and a father broken and helpless. That loving baby would never wake, yet she whimpered for her parents in a fitful endless slumber, not knowing she’d rejoin but one. And then there was Donnie, his battered body slumped behind the wheel of what used to be a car, unconscious and unaware of the awesome gravity of what had taken place.
Mr. Elliot called Donnie a murderer and a thief. He said Donnie had stolen the life from two of the most precious people on the face of God’s good earth. He told the court that he wanted Donnie to “rot in jail, die there and go to hell!” Afterwards, he broke down. The two of them—Donnie and Mr. Elliot—stood helplessly sobbing across the room from one another. Donnie wanted Mr. Elliot to understand that he would do anything to take back what had been done. He kept crying, saying “I’m sorry” over and over again as he pledged he’d do anything for forgiveness. The only response Donnie got came as a tear-choked muddle of a whisper: “You can go straight to hell!”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to beat my head against the wall or pound my fists against something. Barbara sat in solitude, surrounded by well-meaning people, and wept uncontrollably. She held herself, in the absence of Donnie’s embrace, rocking back and forth in her seat.
“God,” I thought, “look at what’s happened to these people.” I was beginning to understand the implications of the issues that surrounded this circumstance and untold similar others.
Back in my college days, sitting in my dorm pounding away on my keyboard, I never imagined a day when something so morose would touch me in such an intensely personal way. I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what had happened in that courtroom, and I decided I needed to know more. I’d managed to get myself tangled up in the system, even if it was indirectly. I didn’t know if there was anything I could do, or should do, for that matter. But now that I was thinking about it, it seemed as if the process was about getting that pound of flesh, an eye for an eye, the ultimate in retribution and penance.
So who really looks out for the victims? Who consoles them and sees to it that they’re made whole again, at least as whole as they can be, given the circumstance? And what happens to those we punish?
Did you know that it only takes about 90 days to acquire a habit? That’s right! Do anything for 90 days and it’s yours!
I have a good friend named Jennie who left the city to take a job on the East Coast a few years back. She returned for a brief visit last year. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to see her. Jennie, Linda, and I went out for dinner and talked about old times and good friends, but the conversation felt unnatural and forced. It was strained and superficial. I tried my best to ignore it, to make things the way they had been, but I couldn’t.
The discussion moved to what our hopes, aspirations, and personal ideologies had been when we were young. Jennie asked if I still thought I could save the world. She laughed as she recounted me holding hands with “those people,” singing