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StephenBuckley  ·  4095 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Can forgiveness play a role in criminal justice?

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.

    “It was excruciating to listen to them talk,” Campbell says. “To look at the photo there. I still see her. It was as traumatic as anything I’ve ever listened to in my life.”
It's hard to read about this and imagine it. We've all been angry before, and I would be the first to say that at times I'm irrationally angry. But to have it play out in such a way, to have every scrap of it laid bare before you when the anger has passed and the regret lies knee deep... I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I cannot imagine that. I cannot imagine the exceptional, scalding pain of talking in quiet voices with a father whose daughter I shot in the head.

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.