Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison Friday for the murder of his wife and son, ostensibly done to re-direct scrutiny from his financial crimes. Putting aside for the moment the weakness of the motive, the crime, if true, is heinous.
But do all first-degree murders deserve life in prison?
One of the great tragedies in criminal justice in the country in the last fifty years are the number of people serving life in prison for felony murder. The driver of the car during a convenience store robbery gone bad, or the unknowing accomplice to a break-in when the co-defendant pulls a gun the accomplice never knew she had, and shoots someone. Most of these people were part of a felony when they were young, they never killed anyone, and yet they are wasting away in prison.
Which brings us to Pamela Smart. Before there was the OJ case, there was the Pamela Smart case in 1990. Smart was a schoolteacher having an affair with a fifteen-year-old student- Billy Flynn, who broke into her house and killed her husband. Flynn, the killer, is free. Smart, is serving a life sentence issued by the State of New Hampshire, who transferred her thirty years ago to the infamous maximum security women's prison in Bedford Hills, NY.
While in prison, Smart has become an ordained minister. She lives on an honors floor for inmates who have earned it. She has mentored generations of young women inmates who have done their time and been released. And still, at age 55, she serves her daily death-in-prison-sentence for a crime an immature 22-year-old woman committed.
The simple question is whether we as a society believe in redemption? If we believe in the human spirit, and redemption and change, then people like Pamela Smart should have the chance to be released. If we believe in vengeance and retribution, then let's just affirm that what we are running is Gulag America.
There are signs this is so. Florida doesn't distinguish between first- and second-degree murder in many cases, mandating life for both. Florida is now seeking to expand the death penalty to include non-homicide crimes, which sits just fine with the diminishing legion of Miami-Dade prosecutors, seemingly hired only for their ability to mindlessly intone "victim wants max."
True story: we walked into court this week and saw a female ASA, during a sounding, robotically intoning, over and over, "the victim authorized plea is..." usually followed by a high prison sentence. Proseutors have become a ChatGPT bot, serving only as a conduit between complaining witnesses and the court. But we digress.
Here is the NY Times article on Smart.
We love to talk about having the greatest justice system on earth. But beyond the massive wrongful conviction problems we have, our justice system doesn't allow for the redemption of the human spirit. Once wrong, always punished. No room for change.
Let he who has not sinned, impose the life sentence.
Here's the penultimate paragraph of the Smart article:
She called the requirements for clemency a conundrum.
“They’re trying to box me into confessing a crime I didn’t commit,” she said. “So if I say I’m a coldhearted killer, you’re going to let me out, but if I say I’m rehabilitated, you won’t let me out?”