But I am really proud of the jurors who made the right decision on Friday in the McStay murder trial. Their verdict was only announced today.
Thank You, Jurors! Good people, listening people, Thank You!
That was an exceedingly long trial. Not quite O.J. Simpson trial length, but it was working its way up there. It ran five months.
The evidence was clearly there. But there was so much obfuscation through overload (the defense strategy) that it risked jamming the jurors' gears. This did not happen. Instead, Charles "Chase" Merritt will be consigned to a small cell for the rest of his life. Doubtless, he will continue to manipulate people on the outside from there. Why let a little thing like a quadruple murder conviction stop your game?
Even if Merritt receives the death penalty, it is almost certain he will never be put to death in the state which let Charles Manson live long enough to be idolized by Axl Rose (who ignominiously recorded one of Charlie's songs) and then die of old age.
A family of four (including two very small children) was murdered, almost certainly within a matter of minutes, in a blitz attack in their own home. What a horrible reality this is to digest. Many people will live with the void which hangs there where four lives were flourishing. Not only their family and loved ones will miss them. Many who never knew them in the flesh mourn them, for in investing care in their fate we came to know them as individuals and as a loving family embarked on a wonderful adventure together. This absence stays with all of us who followed this story from the early days of mystery to the later days of justice.
I wish peace for the McStay family. I wish peace for the family of the convicted killer. There is pain on all sides.
How many years of suffering in countless people one reprobate soul can unleash.
Often, justice is a pale thing, a pale shadow of something our soul wants to exist, call it God or karma or whatever you call that force you wish existed to set things right again in the universe. Justice is a shadow of that thing cast into our broken world. And it has to be enough. It is horribly never enough in tragedies like this one. But it is something. It is the contract between humans, the commitment to decency.
Decent people were murdered by a man who allowed himself to become a monster. Decent people stood up for the murdered and spoke for them and honored their lives with this verdict.
I hope people remember the great love the McStays had for each other, and cherish the people in their lives the way they did each other.
That would be Carver's "small, good thing." That is all we get here: the gift of translating darkness to light. We can hold on to the light of these good people. They are with us, still with us.
Thank You, Jurors! Good people, listening people, Thank You!
That was an exceedingly long trial. Not quite O.J. Simpson trial length, but it was working its way up there. It ran five months.
The evidence was clearly there. But there was so much obfuscation through overload (the defense strategy) that it risked jamming the jurors' gears. This did not happen. Instead, Charles "Chase" Merritt will be consigned to a small cell for the rest of his life. Doubtless, he will continue to manipulate people on the outside from there. Why let a little thing like a quadruple murder conviction stop your game?
Even if Merritt receives the death penalty, it is almost certain he will never be put to death in the state which let Charles Manson live long enough to be idolized by Axl Rose (who ignominiously recorded one of Charlie's songs) and then die of old age.
A family of four (including two very small children) was murdered, almost certainly within a matter of minutes, in a blitz attack in their own home. What a horrible reality this is to digest. Many people will live with the void which hangs there where four lives were flourishing. Not only their family and loved ones will miss them. Many who never knew them in the flesh mourn them, for in investing care in their fate we came to know them as individuals and as a loving family embarked on a wonderful adventure together. This absence stays with all of us who followed this story from the early days of mystery to the later days of justice.
I wish peace for the McStay family. I wish peace for the family of the convicted killer. There is pain on all sides.
How many years of suffering in countless people one reprobate soul can unleash.
Often, justice is a pale thing, a pale shadow of something our soul wants to exist, call it God or karma or whatever you call that force you wish existed to set things right again in the universe. Justice is a shadow of that thing cast into our broken world. And it has to be enough. It is horribly never enough in tragedies like this one. But it is something. It is the contract between humans, the commitment to decency.
Decent people were murdered by a man who allowed himself to become a monster. Decent people stood up for the murdered and spoke for them and honored their lives with this verdict.
I hope people remember the great love the McStays had for each other, and cherish the people in their lives the way they did each other.
That would be Carver's "small, good thing." That is all we get here: the gift of translating darkness to light. We can hold on to the light of these good people. They are with us, still with us.
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