Kate Grosmaire keeps asking herself if she has really forgiven Conor. “I think about it all the time,” she said. “Is that forgiveness still there? Have I released that debt?” Even as the answer comes back yes, she says, it can’t erase her awareness of what she no longer has. “Forgiving Conor doesn’t change the fact that Ann is not with us. My daughter was shot, and she died. I walk by her empty bedroom at least twice a day.”
I don't have the time now to respond to this with the fullness that it deserves, but this article was shocking and engrossing in a way I can't say I've ever felt before. It's very common, and very easy, to find atheists online bashing religion and showing the damage it's done. But this seems to be a good thing, a positive step not only for this family but for the criminal justice system which allowed it to happen- and there isn't a hope in hell that this would have come about were it not for the extraordinary belief of those parents, the Grosmaire's.
I would be curious to know what other people think about whether this should or should not be more widely practiced. If not with murder cases, then with almost every other kind of crime. It really calls into question the existence and purpose of legal systems.