Читать книгу Victim Impact - Mel Bradshaw - Страница 7

The conference was being held in the various lecture halls of University College, but the panel discussion was to take place across King’s College Circle in the seventeen-hundred-seat Convocation Hall. It was routinely used now for first-year psychology lectures as well as for graduation ceremonies, and the enclosed circular space could be almost as hot and humid at this time of year as the inside of a clothes dryer.

Ted dropped by the athletic centre for a swim and a shower in the late afternoon before heading over to the hall. He’d brought a freshly pressed golf shirt to change into, leisure wear that had become the work uniform of everyone from burger flippers and supermarket checkers to library technicians and massage therapists, and would—he hoped—be accepted as suitable for an unpretentious academic as well. In keeping with the folksy tone, Ted and the panellists sat at their places, chatting pleasantly as members of the public filed in. By 7:05, the hall was a quarter full. As it was little more so by 7:10, Ted tapped his mike and got proceedings underway. After a few standard remarks, he asked the first speaker to introduce herself and her position on the question, “Is Canada soft on crime?”

In appearance, Rose Cesario suggested a beach ball, short and round, with a lack of neck, a surplus of chins and a gleam of sunlight in her brown cap of hair. A well-fitted pale grey summer suit nudged her back in the direction of seriousness. Her eyes were outlined severely in black. And any hint of frivolity was forgotten when she began to speak.

“As councillor for one of Toronto’s western wards, I have worked tirelessly to get more police officers on the streets and to cut down on response times to 911 calls. Much as I’ve been able to accomplish, however, the real power to fight crime is in Ottawa, and that is why I will be running in the next federal election as the Conservative candidate in Etobicoke Southwest.”

She proceeded to deliver a harangue stuffed with the sort of statistics that make listeners’ eyes cross. The number of felons on day parole that commit fresh acts of violence, the number on full parole, the number on statutory release. Eventually she got on to something a little easier to connect with, the so-called “Truth in Sentencing” issue. Up to a point, Ted sympathized with her: the state was attempting to implement advanced concepts of penology while posing as guardian of the old-time religion of punishment—and the disguise had become transparent. Of course, the populist politician expressed herself somewhat differently.

“The state,” proclaimed Rose Cesario, “implements trendy new ways to coddle criminals while pretending to uphold time-tested standards of justice. What a hoax!

“The Criminal Code section 235(1) says in black and white: ‘Everyone who commits first degree murder or second degree murder is guilty of an indictable offence and shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life.’ Imprisonment for life—what could be clearer? But then our Correctional Service tells us that someone that commits first or second degree murder can get out on parole and still be serving a life sentence. That person is serving his or her sentence ‘in the community.’ ” The speaker reinforced her disdain for the phrase by drawing quotation marks in the air. “Well, I don’t want Clifford Olson or Paul Bernardo serving his sentence in my community, thank you very much. A sentence served in the community is not a sentence of imprisonment. The community is not a prison. It’s where we live. So let’s stop fooling ourselves. Let Parliament say nothing about life imprisonment unless they mean it. Let judges say when passing sentence for second degree murder, ‘You will spend a minimum of ten years behind bars and then be granted parole if you are found deserving of it.’

“One final proof that we are soft on crime in this country is the practice of passing concurrent sentences. Commit one murder or a dozen, the sentence will likely be the same. Multiple killers get a volume discount: only the first victim’s pain is given any weight by the justice system. A serial predator can be punished for several rapes simultaneously and be back on the streets in no more time than if he had offended only once. If we don’t want to be soft on crime, let the criminals pay for each one of their crimes, and serve consecutive sentences rather than concurrent ones.

“When I look around this room, I see people whose hearts would I’m sure go out to the victims of crime. Let’s be softhearted to them, the sufferers of wrong, not to the wrongdoers, the people that choose to hurt and kill.”

Robust applause for this rather impersonal stump speech. Ted estimated the median age of the audience at thirty-eight—retirees in the front rows, fit twenties with bicycle helmets on their laps in the back, a few curious academics of all ages sprinkled around the edges. Queues were already forming at the audience mikes, but Ted announced that he wanted to get each panellist’s position on the record before opening the evening up to questions from the floor.

Rose Cesario’s final words about victims of crime were, deliberately or not, an appropriate cue for Martha Kesler. She was a grey-haired woman with dark pouches under her eyes, so physically slight as to look somewhat lost in her shiny wheelchair. The mention of her name, however, elicited a broad smile from her. Two rows of even teeth shone as brightly as her Indian cotton white blouse. Her voice was clear and strong, and she spoke perhaps half as fast as her predecessor, the emphatic deliberation of her delivery sounding every bit as confident as Cesario’s rapid fire.

“As you may know, someone’s finger on the trigger of an unlicensed firearm put me in this chair. As a crime victim, I’m very grateful for that heartfelt sympathy Rose spoke of. Anyone that expects me to second her call for tougher sentences, however, will be disappointed. I’m much more inclined to the opinion of Oscar Wilde, who wrote, ‘A community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime’.”

Drop the word “infinitely”, Ted thought, and the nineteenth century wit could pass for a twenty-first century criminologist.

“Believe me,” Martha Kesler went on, “I know where those punitive thoughts come from. Four years ago, I was crossing a mall parking lot when I found myself on the ground with a bullet in my spine and that dumb tunnel of light everyone talks about opening up in front of me. Well, I had an eight-year-old daughter at the time, and I can tell you I wasn’t ready to get sucked up any tunnel of light. Coming back, though, was no picnic. Pain wasn’t the worst of it. I was prey to flashbacks, and I had what they call a ‘hyperactive startle reflex’, when what I needed to deal with a preteen daughter was two good legs and nerves of steel. Violent crime leaves you feeling powerless. Would I have changed places with my attacker—who probably never was my attacker, just a hit man with a poor aim? Would I have taken from him the use of his legs—even if I couldn’t have had back the use of mine? I’m not proud to admit it, but I surely would.

“Before long, however, I knew that my appetite for power was much bigger than that, and wouldn’t be satisfied by such a small and pointless result. If I wanted to feel strong, I had to do something beneficial. That’s how I came to train as a grief counsellor. And that’s how I became involved through my church in the Restorative Justice movement. Tyler, stand up, please.”

The young man who had manoeuvred Ms. Kesler’s wheelchair onto the dais rose awkwardly from a seat in the front row. He turned slowly to let all audience members get a look at him. A look at everything, Ted noticed, except for his large hands, which were balled into fists and hidden behind his back where they were visible to the panel alone. Ted surmised what was coming next.

“Tyler,” said Martha Kesler, “has bravely given me permission to tell you that he is serving a conditional sentence for burglarizing parked cars. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a conditional sentence is one served ‘in the community’—there’s that phrase again that Ms. Cesario so dislikes. Really, though, it’s not so scary. To be eligible for such a sentence, an offender must satisfy a judge that he will not threaten anyone’s safety and that he will comply with rules and conditions imposed by the judge. It has been my pleasure and honour to give Tyler the opportunity to earn the means to compensate the people whose stereos he stole. To get tough on crime by putting him behind bars would do nothing to repair the damage he’s caused.”

Ted thanked her.

“Just one more thing, Mr. Moderator, if I may,” said Martha Kesler. “I need to make it absolutely crystal clear that Tyler had nothing to do with shooting me. That party has never been found. And this is the point: Canada is not so much soft on crime as clueless. I say find the criminals so we can help them not to be criminals.”

The clapping was louder than for the first speaker, accompanied by a few whistles from the younger spectators at the back. The crowd was warming up.

“May I go next?” the man immediately to Ted’s left asked him as soon as he was confident of being heard.

Lionel Kerr, a Maritimer if Ted remembered correctly, wore cowboy boots and a blue cowboy shirt with silver buttons, presumably out of loyalty to his present employer, the University of Calgary. He’d been a criminological institution for longer than Ted could remember, and Ted remembered when Lionel’s straight, silver hair had been golden yellow to the last strand.

“A propos of what Martha Kesler has been saying, my friends,” he began, “let’s try an informal survey right here in this hall. How many of you believe that harsher sentences will deter violent criminals from reoffending? Don’t be shy. Stick up those hands if you believe more jail time will cut down on recidivism rates.”

A minority of hands shot up.

“Come on now,” Kerr coaxed. “There must be more of you than that.”

Encouraged by his broad and welcoming grin, more of those seated closer to the stage raised their hands hesitantly, and a sprinkling of those behind followed their lead until there was a bare majority indicating they favoured tougher sentences.

“That’s more what I’d expect,” said Kerr. “Well, you’re wrong. Studies in both Canada and the U.S. show time after time that people contemplating violent crime don’t think about punishments because they don’t expect to be caught. And they’re ninety-six per cent right. According to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, in the year 1996, for every one hundred offences reported to police, only four offenders were sentenced. In other words, so few criminals are actually sentenced that from a deterrent point of view it doesn’t matter what penalties the law applies. And it’s not as if we have to keep convicted murderers locked up to prevent their killing again. Whatever you may think, my friends, that’s not something most murderers do. Unlike break and enter artists, for most murderers, once seems to be enough.”

Ted heard a heavy exhalation from his right, and out of the corner of his eye saw that Rose Cesario was close to boiling point.

“Now let me ask you another question,” Lionel Kerr was saying. “Suppose, what I take to be the case, none of you lives with or knows any murderers. What risk do you think you run in this country of being killed by a stranger as you go about your business? Come on now, let’s hear some numbers. One in a hundred? One in a thousand? What happened to Martha here is dreadful. She could have been killed if that bullet had gone through her heart. Thinking about that, will you feel less safe as you cross the mall parking lot? What are the chances of being killed by a stranger in Canada? Yes, sir, top row, what do you say?”

A boy wearing a No Fear T-shirt and sprawling across three seats at the back called out, “One in a hundred thousand.”

“Half that,” said Kerr. “Since 2000, Canada’s murder rate has been hovering below two per hundred thousand, but in nearly half the cases the killer is a member of the victim’s family; in nearly a third, it’s a friend or acquaintance that’ll off you; and less than a quarter of all murder victims are killed by strangers. The plain truth is that people that worry about crime are as irrational as people that buy lottery tickets. Your odds of being a crime victim are as long as your odds of winning the jackpot.”

“Dr. Kerr,” Rose Cesario erupted, “I have before me a publication of the Correctional Service that claims, and I quote, ‘In 2000, only seventeen per cent of solved homicides were committed by strangers.’ I underline that word solved. When the killer is not known to the victim, that killer is much harder to catch, and so the statistics give a skewed idea of the frequency of stranger killings. We don’t have far to look to put a human face on this fact. Martha Kesler has just told us that her assailant has never been apprehended. If his bullet had killed her, her killing wouldn’t have been taken account of in the statistics.”

“My dear lady,” said Kerr with a courtly nod, “do you really think that if you could have your way, if you could lock up a few bad actors and throw away the key, that you or I would be one whit safer walking the streets?”

Ted knew he had to jump in. Silver hairs notwithstanding, Lionel Kerr wasn’t old enough to have made an innocent mistake in using the patronizing word lady. And it was plain from the daggers flashing from Rose Cesario’s dark eyes that she took it in the spirit intended. “I didn’t hear Ms. Cesario say anything about throwing away keys. Her position, I understood, was that conditional release from prison should be earned, not automatic, and that we should not miscall release ‘imprisonment’.”

“Vengefulness,” said Lionel Kerr, considerable steel in his voice, “is a primitive, unlovely emotion, however human—”

“Let’s save the debate until after we’ve heard from our last panellist.” Ted had actually reached his hand out to cover Lionel Kerr’s mike, but managed to avoid turning the evening into a brawl by changing the action into a gesture towards the man on Kerr’s left. “Eliot Szabo has the floor.”

“Sorry to be the cause of controversy,” said the lawyer. “Although that’s not an entirely new experience for me, it usually doesn’t happen till after I’ve opened my mouth.”

A gust of laughter rustled through the hall. The tension eased.

Szabo wore a grey, chalk-striped suit and managed to do so without the appearance of perspiration. His tie was loosened and the top button of his white shirt undone. He sat sideways in his chair. An amused expression played over a clever, smile-wrinkled face. He had a mannerism of patting his forehead, which was already high and seemed to be making gradually for the nape of his neck. Tufts of mouse-coloured hair stuck out around large jug-handle ears.

“I feel certain,” he said, “that members of the public have been lured here under false pretenses tonight. From the lineup, it looked as if they’d be getting three panellists who’d be tough on crime, and one criminologist. What they got was, first, a populist politician—no swindle there. Second, a crime victim, but not someone to argue that the only justice for victims is stiff penalties for the criminals. Instead of a Hammurabi, you got a return-good-for-evil Christian. Am I right, Martha?”

“Afraid so, Eliot,” Martha Kesler replied.

“Third, the criminologist. Well, you know what they’re like. Some of us Crown counsel think they’re a bit of a soft touch when it comes to crooks. Criminologists are basically sociologists, and that—like any science—is a pretty deterministic business. Science is big on cause and effect, and not much into blame. Lionel will fill in the finer points for us in a minute, but what he’s already said tells you which side of the question he takes.

“The kicker, fourth and last, is that even your prosecutor isn’t quite the crusader against evildoers you may have been hoping for. I’ve spent most of my working life in the defence bar. Those scumbags the public would like to see locked up? I worked my butt off for twenty years trying to keep them out of jail. Last year, I crossed over to the other side—for the money as much as anything. The state may lock too many people up or lock the wrong people up, but at least it pays its legal bills. When I saw that last salary settlement negotiated by the Ontario Crown Attorneys’ Association, I knew which side of the courtroom I belonged on.

“So, Martha is soft on criminals because she’s a Christian and wants to forgive them, Lionel because he’s a determinist and thinks they can’t help it, and me—well, I sympathize with criminals because they’re the people I know and work with. I don’t know many victims. Call it the Stockholm Syndrome if you like. Or think of it as something like a zoologist put on the bat project who ends up sympathizing with bats. Call me a bat-lover or call me just plain bats, but I can’t see that punishment does anyone any good. The public loves it, but it looks like an unhealthy addiction to me.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though. If you want to see crooks punished, mandatory minimum sentences may not be the way to go. Why? Because the Crown gets to decide who will be prosecuted. If we think the mandatory minimum is more than is warranted, we will simply prosecute a lesser included charge. Or not proceed at all and let the accused walk. That may sound high-handed, but it’s based on our knowing that if the penalty seems excessive, judges and juries won’t convict. If we take those cases to trial, we’re just wasting the time we could have spent getting a conviction against some other chump on some other charge.”

Again Ted was quick off the mark. Before the audience could get their hands together, he pointedly thanked Lionel Kerr as well as Eliot Szabo so that the former would not feel he was the only one to get no chance at being applauded. Before the clapping had quite subsided, a new voice came softly and insistently over the sound system.

“Now that the panellists have all had a chance to state where they’re coming from, I’d like to ask a question.”

There were long queues at each of the two audience microphones now. The speaker was an underfed young man with large glasses and short hair.

“Which panellist is this question for?” To Ted’s right, his peripheral vision picked up an extra attentiveness in the posture of Rose Cesario.

“For the three ‘enlightened’ panellists. That is, every one but the first.”

“Fire away.”

The boy shuffled his feet and read his question from a small blue notebook. Wooden seats creaked as audience members turned to look at him.

“Ms. Kesler, Dr. Kerr, Mr. Szabo, I’d like you to think of the person now alive that means the most to you. Please think of the person whose injuries would cause you the most pain. Would the murder of that person change your view of how a murderer should be treated?”

“I just don’t know,” Martha Kesler replied promptly. “To forgive those that’ve trespassed against our loved ones is without doubt harder than to forgive those that’ve trespassed against us. My daughter, for example, is much more bitter about my injuries than I am. Now if she—if Cara—were murdered . . . That’s no small thing you’re asking. I scarcely have the courage to say the words. I just pray that I would be up to the challenge.”

“I put it to you,” said the questioner, “that if your views did change, we’re wasting our time this evening listening to people that don’t know what they’re talking about. And if your views were not changed by such an event, you would not be human.”

Eliot Szabo pulled his microphone towards him.

“It’s better to be human than inhuman. But when we’re at our most human, we’re not always at our most lucid. You pose an interesting dilemma—what’s your name?”

“My name is Tom. What’s your answer?”

“My answer is that if someone I loved was murdered, my views likely would change, but that the vengeful way I’d think then would be wrong and that the way I think now is right.”

“You attach no importance,” the questioner insisted, “to people having the courage of their convictions?”

“Sure I do, Tom. But you can’t judge the truth of an argument by the moral strength or weakness of the arguer.”

This was the point at which Ted had to bite his tongue to keep from jumping in. He understood what Szabo was saying about the fallacy of ad hominem attacks—and yet wondered whether, if a philosophy consistently failed to stand up in the crunch, it was indeed a philosophy for human beings. Recollecting his responsibilities, he asked if Lionel Kerr would like to respond.

“If Tom has been listening,” said Kerr, “he’ll realize that the likelihood that anyone in this room, let alone anyone on this panel, would lose a loved one to murder is negligible.”

Ted wanted to ask if Tom himself had lost someone he loved to murder, but the boy had moved away from the mike and was nowhere to be seen.

The panel discussion wrapped up shortly after eight to leave time for the professionals to get over to University College for the conference keynote address. The evening ended with a reception at the Faculty Club, where Ted reconnected with Lionel Kerr. Years ago, they had done a paper together on victim precipitation of assault and how within certain subcultures a disdainful look, let alone a disrespectful word, had to be considered an act of violence and a mitigation of any aggressive response. Since then Ted had done work on the ethos of criminal organizations, and he had some questions for Lionel about Daniel Wolf’s seminal study of bikers in Alberta.

“All Niagara labels, I see.” Lionel ran his eyes over the bottles on the bar. “Which would you recommend, Ted?”

“Karin’s the wine expert in our house. She’d steer you towards the Riesling, which seems to be dryer than the average in Europe. I find it refreshing—which is as technical as my wine vocabulary gets.”

“That Rosie the Riveter on your panel was some hothead. You did well to keep her from running away with the show.” Lionel put the glass of straw-coloured wine to his lips. “Yes, very pleasant.”

“She can run, but she can’t win,” said Ted. “Not in Etobicoke Southwest. The Liberals had a margin of victory of over twenty thousand votes there last time. And it would take a major cataclysm to make law and order the ballot question. The riding is divided between young families interested in affordable day care and aging baby boomers worried about the future of medicare.”

“You’re thoroughly informed,” Lionel chuckled. “Live there?”

“My father-in-law.”

Kerr wore a large wristwatch, on which Ted couldn’t help reading that it was five to ten. He ought to head for the subway soon if he wanted to catch the 22:43 commuter train westbound from Union Station. Departures were only once an hour at this time of night, and he’d have to be back on campus early tomorrow morning. Before excusing himself, Ted diplomatically—though not without genuine interest—gave Lionel an opportunity to report on the progress of the investigations he was conducting in partnership with a microbiologist. Looking not for a crime gene exactly, but possibly a virus, something treatable ultimately with pharmaceuticals. Kerr’s enthusiasm, once whipped up, was hard to rein in. In the end, Ted made his train only by hailing a taxi on Spadina Avenue.