It became important to us that people know what we most wanted from the courts regarding our case, and it wasn't money. Several people had been asking us for information about what was happening in the case. Some had wondered if we would be suing the man who had caused the accident, especially since it was becoming less and less likely, in our opinion, that the criminal courts would grant us any kind of justice or satisfaction. Again, we tried to emphasize to people that money was not what we were after. We wanted the courts to punish the man as a way to validate that our precious son's life (and the lives of his friends) was valuable. We wanted to send a message to the rest of the world that a person should not have the right to so cavalierly and carelessly drive a vehicle in a manner that results in the deaths of three innocent children without expecting severe consequences. This meant that we would have to experience some other situations we never thought we would have to face. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, we had been interviewed by TV and newspaper reporters. We saw ourselves on local news programs and in front page stories in our local newspaper. Now, we were part of a press conference, organized by a friend well-versed in the field of public relations, on the steps of the courthouse. The mothers of our lost children wanted the public, and the court officials, to know what we were enduring and what we really wanted. We also spent time contacting local and state political officials to gain information about what (if anything) could be done to change the laws which basically mandated that in an accident such as this where no drugs or alcohol had been involved the maximum penalty for the driver was one year in jail for each death. That was, of course, no certainty. It would ultimately be up to the judge or jury, depending on how the case would ultimately be adjudicated. As the months crawled by, we found it necessary to repeatedly show up at the courthouse.
Oftentimes, the Deputy District Attorney would tell us that we didn't have to attend if we were not up to it, but even if he felt nothing much of any importance was likely to happen, we still knew that we had to be there just in case. We had to represent our son who could no longer represent himself. It was difficult, extremely difficult, to have to walk into that courtroom time after time and see the man who had caused the accident, the man who had, accidentally or not, taken our son from us. When we knew that a court date was upcoming, I found myself becoming more and more agitated and stressed for several days leading up to the court day. (Some months after all of this court business was finally
resolved I returned to the courthouse for jury duty. All those old feelings bubbled back to the surface. It was all I could do to even enter the building. I wanted to run away screaming.) It also became unbelievably frustrating to have to put up with all the delays and legal maneuvers by the man's attorney. What kind of men were these? What kind of human beings were these? Hadn't they caused us enough heartache already? Why couldn't they just stand up like real men and face the consequences? Why did they have to drag us through all this crap? I found myself wanting to hurt them somehow. I began to feel some very ugly feelings and think some very dark thoughts. More than that, although I suppose we've all had such feelings and thoughts at some point over some situation in our lives, for the first time in my life I actually feared that, if given the opportunity, I would actually be capable of bringing these frightful sensations to reality. That frightened me.
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