Rumpole has a pretty moving post about the Lady Jaguars here, about a group of girls sent from juvenile court to play basketball together.
Here's another emotional story about a debate between D.C. jail inmates and JMU students about whether life without parole should be abolished:
Cunningham, who had returned to the correctional facility to await a posttrial motion, stood in a blue polo shirt and khaki pants and argued for the abolishment of life sentences without parole.
“You are looking at the representation of everything that this debate is about,” Cunningham said as people in the overflowing courtroom cried. “All Americans should stand for rehabilitation, not retribution.”
2 comments:
Let's look at the flip side of this argument. I am 7 years old. I come home one day after school and find out my mother was murdered at work. She managed a bank and was shot dead during a robbery. I adored her as she taught me a lot. I am now 35. I went the rest of my childhood without a mother. I grieved every day and still do. It is like emotional torture but I have survived. Now I walk into a federal courtroom and see the person who destroyed my life and murdered my mother standing there pretending to be Oliver Wendell Holmes arguing that he should be let free to enjoy the freedoms that he stole from my mother. Excuse me while I vomit.
There is nothing that will make that little boy whole whether the man who killed his mother is released, held for life, executed, or otherwise. In the meantime, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." (Matthew 5:7).
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