Justice Reexamined

Justice is a colorful word.  It means a plethora of different things in different situations to different people.  Dictionary.com has nearly a dozen different takes on the word, all with slightly unique ways of describing the idea.  Personally, I tend to associate the word “justice” with an idea of someone getting what they deserve, or (more positively) someone getting what they have a right to.  Using another definition of the word “right”, justice is a chance to “make things right”.

Justice can also be looked at as a way to bring things to an equilibrium, or get an unbalanced situation “back to normal”.

Back in August of 2009, I wrote a little bit about my perspective on justice, particularly how a parent might respond after his or her child has been murdered.  As I re-read my own words, I’m struck by how cavalier I sound.  I am not anywhere close to an expert on grieving a loss or knowing how to respond to a heinous act committed against one’s own children.

To say that my position has softened would be misleading.  I’m not sure if I should even have a “position” on something like this.  Some of this probably comes from the natural maturity of life, but I would say that a lot of it has come from an event much closer to home.

This week, a gruesome crime committed against two young children has rocked our community here in Evansville, IN.  Early Saturday morning, a man named Jeffrey Weisheit tied up his girlfriend’s children, duct taped their mouths shut, and burned them to death with gasoline and road flares.  He then fled to Kentucky in his 2010 Bumblebee Camaro, where he was quickly spotted, arrested, and extradited back to Indiana.

I’ve been wrestling internally with this episode and the role that justice will play as things progress.  Many people around here are having similar struggles.  My mother-in-law was well acquainted with the mother of the children, who is currently pregnant with Weisheit’s child.  How do you explain that situation to a child?  It’s been difficult for my mother-in-law to find the right words of comfort for this situation.  It is incalculably more difficult for that families involved to try to put the pieces back together and find a life that is once again “normal”.

On the local newspaper’s website, the biological father of the children takes part in the comments section of the article.  He vacillates between anger, forgiveness, and regret.  Reading his lines breaks your heart in a whole new way.  How do you wake up one day with children, and go to bed the same night with none?

He also posted some links to pictures and videos of the children, alive and happy in that life.

After watching, it’s even more sobering to imagine their pain and suffering.  The fact that the crime was committed by the trusting hands of one of their caregivers beyond words.  For those of us who have children, and even those that don’t, it’s hard to stomach that such acts are possible.  It shakes our faith in mankind, and perhaps in God as well.

Now, the question on many of our minds is:

“How do we make this right?”

Does justice call for Weisheit’s death in order to balance things out and make it right?  Does he need to be tortured in kind?  Will justice prevail if he is given a life sentence?  Does his family deserve to suffer like the family of the victims?

I don’t know, and I don’t even want to offer a prescription.  I don’t know what to do.  And it doesn’t really matter.  May justice prevail.