Vengeance is Mine.....

I did court-appointed felony work for about 5 years. During that time, I saw many, many things which have had a great impact on my career as a lawyer and as a person. Tragedies occur on a daily basis in our society, and as a lawyer, you get to see the impact of them on so many people around you.

I recall having numerous cases where young drivers (all male) had gone out and gotten drunk. They then get behind the wheel and cause terrible accidents. When they come to, get sober, and finally realize what they have done, they experience terrible guilt and shame at their actions. Quite often, the person that has died in the accident (or worse yet, who is crippled) is a close personal friend of the driver. The knowledge that you caused the death or serious injury of a close friend is itself a punishment that goes far beyond whatever a court can do to punish a person.

I have stood beside my clients in the courtroom as they are sentenced thousands of times. Victims of the crimes have an opportunity to speak to the offender at that time. Countless times I have heard victims vent their frustrations, anger, hatred, and despair at the person who harmed them or their family member. In drunk driving cases involving death, I have heard people say that Hell is not a good enough place for the offender and that they hope that the offender has to suffer in this life what he has made the victim’s family suffer.

The response of the victims is understandable, but rarely does their venting of the hurt, anger, and pain really have an impact on the offender, who already feels bad and who already knows that he is in need of severe punishment for justice to be accomplished. However, there was one sentencing when the victim of the crime accomplished an everlasting change in one of my clients.

My client, a twenty year old man, got drunk and drove the wrong way down US 131. He got into a head-on collision with a 55 year old woman who was on her way home. She died instantly and my client suffered numerous serious injuries to his leg and foot, none of them life-threatening. He plead guilty to the charge and sentencing was set. My client felt awful about what had happened and felt that he deserved whatever punishment was set by the court.

At sentencing, a 56 year old man, the husband of the wife who had been killed, got up and read the following statement that he had prepared beforehand (and I paraphrase):

Dear wife,

Never again will I awaken to the smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen, nor will I ever have the chance to walk by you as you sit at the kitchen table and catch the faint drift of my favorite perfume.

We will never be able to retire to our cottage and spend long afternoons walking hand-in-hand along the beach as we have so many times before.

I will never get the chance again to tell you how much I love you and how much your friendship and companionship has meant to me over the long years of our life together, because that chance has been taken away from me by a young man who made such a terrible decision.

I miss you and love you with all of my heart, and look forward to again being reunited with you in Heaven. Until that time, there will be a void in my life and my heart that only you and your touch can fill. I only hope that someday I will again experience the joy that I took so for granted in my years with you. I love you.

Then he turned to my client and said,

Young man, you may never really understand what you have taken from me. And left to my own, I would never be able to even speak to you. But I know a person who has seen every bad thing that you have ever done and yet still loves you. In fact, knowing what you’ve done to my wife, he even chose to die for you. If He can forgive you, then I can as well.

I want you to know that you have my forgiveness for what you have done. God will take care of me and meet my needs. I can only hope that you will seek and find the forgiveness for what you’ve done through my Saviour, Jesus Christ, because that forgiveness is there waiting for you. I urge you to give your life to Him and to trust Him the rest of your days.

No one in the Courtroom could speak. I was crying, the audience was crying, and even the crusty old judge was wiping tears from his eyes. I could only whisper that we had nothing else to say before sentencing.

I guess the moral of what I am trying to say is that love and forgiveness are much more powerful forces than hate and vengeance. I do not know what the young man ultimately chose to do, but I still carry the impact of what the victim’s husband said in the Courtroom to this day.

Blawgerman.