My latest attempt in getting back into shape is a gym Membership. With the membership came three "free" personal training sessions. They asked me if I wanted a male or female trainer and I said I did not care, so she offered me a man whose name (for reasons that will become clear) I will not divulge. For purposes of this blog, let's just call him Buff Boy.
So Buff Boy and I had our free sessions. The first one I was weighed (yikes!) and measured (how did my ass get that big?) and BMI'd (22). Then he put me through the paces, and quickly learned that I am pretty strong in spite of my advanced age and the layer of adipose tissue that has crept onto my body. So, the sessions got harder and harder and then I found myself signing up for a set of 6 (no longer free). By now I have spent about 6 hours with Buff Boy.
Buff Boy is quiet and reserved but funny and sweet and kind. Then yesterday, I decided to google Buff Boy. And I discovered that, besides being a sweet and thoughtful young man, and an excellent trainer, he also is a convicted felon. When he was 16 years old (1994) he committed a very serious and violent crime. He was sent to jail at age 18 and remained there until late last year. He is now out subject to 15 years of parole. I don't know about you, but I find that to be very heavy.
And it makes me think. Is a violent felon always a violent felon? Or, does the debt paid to society by giving up basically half one's life mean that we should forgive and forget? I must admit that I have tended to be firmly in the former camp... but this now, I don't know.
I have often thought about what it must be like to be a criminal lawyer.. to represent society's reprobates and violent offenders. I have read and heard that some lawyers who do that work (like, for example Judith Smith, who is representing Jared Loughner) see the humanity in their clients. They see them as something other than the crimes they have committed. The realize something that I often have espoused but never been confronted with in this particular way..... most people, even people who do evil things, are not completely evil people. In fact, there are probably only a handful of truly evil people who pass through the world - Hitler, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Stalin.... and OBL, KSM, and the rest of those assholes who think it is laudable to blow up little babies and other innocent people..... and maybe certain serial killers. The other people whom I have always thought of as evil, like child pornographers, rapists, animal and child abusers - have evil in them, but are probably not entirely evil.
So, today, while I dug up weeds in my garden and threw the ball for the dogs, I found myself thinking about Buff Boy and crime and about my first day in Professor Robbins' Criminal Law class when he asked for our thoughts on the purpose of criminal punishment - is it deterrence? if so, is it specific deterrence? Or is it general deterrence? Is it strictly for retribution? Does that serve the purposes of society? if we put a person in prison as an "eye for an eye" reason and the person then comes out into society again, what does that mean for the prisoner? For society?
And I thought about Buff Boy with his kind brown eyes and I wondered how he could have done such a thing as that for which he was convicted, and I wondered how must it have been to spend his entire young adulthood in jail? The newspaper said he was remorseful. I suppose he had lots of time to think during all those years. How does one ever stop thinking about something like that? How does one enter the world again with any kind of light?
It also makes me think about the Internet and the propriety of lurking around in other peoples' lives. I believe that is what Facebook does really but in that case, the people whom you have anointed as your friends have a license to lurk. And I suppose an open and free media gives all of us a license to lurk into those things that are in the public domain.... like crime and punishment. i almost wish that I had not lurked into this because, crazy as it seems, I still really like Buff Boy. Even after I read about his heinous crime, I feel kind of sisterly and protective toward him. And given all I thought that I knew about myself, that is kind of crazy.
I believe that we are constantly having to re-evaluate our beliefs. But, this situation makes me question myself, question my rigidity, and my, I will admit it, extremely harsh stance against people who have committed violent crimes. I am hoping that this will make me a kinder and more compassionate person, to think before I condemn or judge, to realize that, even people who do really bad things, are not necessarily bad people. They may have a mother who loves them. God loves them. Maybe I should try to, ah ur hmm .... if not, love them, try to summon up some compassion.
Wish me luck.
wow. good food for thought, surely.
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