In the courtroom of honor,
the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal
and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books
ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles
get properly handled ...
Stared at the person who killed
for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin'
that way without warnin'
And he spoke through his cloak,
most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly,
for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with
a six-month sentence
-- Bob Dylan, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"
Think about the worst thing you've ever done.
Just fetch it up from the black waters of your gut and let it lay there cold and pale and choking. Consider it. Hold it in your mind for a little while. Until maybe you feel a little sick.
I don't want to know what it was; I don't want you to confess it to your significant other or your spiritual leader if you haven't done that already. I just want you to think about it for an uncomfortable period of time.
Maybe you can't come up with any really big deal, maybe you're just shuffling through a deck of low-grade malfeasance. Times when you said cruel things. Maybe you took something that wasn't yours. Maybe you undermined someone who thought you were a friend. Maybe you were unfaithful. Maybe you can think of a dozen petty hypocrisies you prosecute every day.
Maybe, in the scheme of things, this means you're a decent person. Congratulations, you're not O.J.
But maybe you went right to one particular thing. That maybe you got away with. Or at least have gotten away with until now. Maybe the statute of limitations has run out.
Maybe you think a lot about this horrible thing you did; maybe enough time has passed that you can almost believe the universe has forgiven you. Maybe you're wrecked now, thinking about that horrible thing. Maybe you've been forgiven and have forgiven yourself.
Doesn't matter, just keep it in mind.
There was a big roar last week because a kid out in California who was going to a snooty private college got a six-month prison sentence for doing something horrible. We can presume that if he were not a young white athlete from a comfortable background with a family with the wherewithal to provide him with a lawyer, then the outcome might have been much different. Brock Turner got a six-month sentence; he will likely spend three months in jail before being released in September. The judge worried that a longer sentence might mess up his life.
You understand the outrage.
Turner took advantage of a woman when she was at her most vulnerable and when he was caught, instead of standing up in court and admitting he was wrong, lawyered up and spent months crafting a defense designed to blame a campus culture where there was a lot of drinking and promiscuity. He was a kid from Ohio, suddenly introduced into California bacchanalia.
We might think that was a dubious argument, but the judge bought it. ("Bury the rag deep in your face," Dylan sang. "For now's the time for your tears.")
And yes, maybe Brock Turner was just a little bit of a victim, in the sense he wasn't raised right.
I'd like to think that most of us, confronted with a blacked-out person, would either try to get that person some medical attention or, at worst, pretend we didn't notice them. A few of us might consider rifling their handbag or stealing their watch, but only the most depraved would do what this kid did. (And it's fair to wonder if it's the worst thing he'll ever do.)
I like to think the reason why most of us behave ourselves is pretty simple. It's not because we're afraid of going to jail or being ridiculed on the Internet. It's because most of us have some sort of inherent sense of what is right and what is wrong--what we call a conscience or, if we want to get fancy, a moral compass--that bothers us whenever we act in antisocial ways.
Other people have a different view. They're more like the coder Gilfoyle on Silicon Valley who, in last Sunday's episode of the HBO series, characterized our kind as selfish and venal: "It's a war of all against all. The history of humanity is a book written in blood. We're all just animals in a pit."
That's a way of looking at it. Some people think the only reason people obey the law or act civilly is because of the threat of punishment or opprobrium. I'm afraid I'm more like the character Jared, who in the wake of Gilfoyle's tirade says, "I feel very sad now."
Yet as much as I disagree with the underpinning philosophy, I have to admit it's a reasonable hypothesis. People do horrible things all the time. (I've done them, you've done them.) Maybe we would all be worse people if we thought we could get away with doing horrible things. Certainly that's what wrong with some habitual criminals--a lot of them imagine that they are smarter than the police. A lot of the people in prison probably calculated that they could get away with it.
No doubt Turner thought he could get away with it. Maybe because people who look like him, who come from the same socio-economic background, get away with things all the time.
I think we send too many people to prison, and that the state has no legitimate right to revenge. The criminal justice system is supposed to make us safer, to remove dangerous people from our society and if possible correct them. The goal is not to balance the suffering of their victims by inflicting pain on the convicted. The goal is a less dangerous, more civil society. We imprison too many people because larger prison populations are economically and politically useful for some. My problem isn't that some swimmer's sentence was too light.
I don't really care about Brock Turner. He's just one of those names that the news cycle latches onto. Maybe he'll get through this, maybe he'll change his name, fade into the sort of upper-middle-class respectability to which he'll likely feel entitled. And maybe, 20 years from now, he'll think about the worst thing he ever did.
And he'll feel sick.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
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Editorial on 06/12/2016