When the judge asked the defendant to rise while he was pronouncing the agreed upon sentence, I wasn't sure what I would feel. As the judge was speaking, I felt mostly relief that this part of our journey was about to end. The man was remanded immediately to be taken to the local jail to begin serving the rest of his sentence. He was granted credit for time already served, but he still would have nearly two years left in custody. At least, that's what we thought. As things turned out, due to some of his chronic health issues being more than the authorities at the jail were able (or willing) to deal with, the man's sentence was converted to house arrest with an ankle monitor. Again, I felt those by now familiar feelings of disbelief and outrage. Monitored or not, he would be at home with his family. If we wanted to spend time with our son we had to go to the cemetery. It just didn't seem fair. I knew, however, that this was testing my newfound sense of closure and freedom from this man's influence in my life. I fired off an e-mail to the DA's office to express my outrage and anger at this turn of events, but that was the extent of my response. Again, I did not want this man to have any kind of power over me anymore.
With a couple of notable exceptions, we didn't really have to think of this man again. One of those exceptions actually mostly involved our daughter. Carly had been 10 years old when her brother was killed. Shortly after starting high school, she discovered that there was a student at the school with the same name as the man's son. At first we hoped it was just a horrible coincidence, but we soon found it was not. The man's son was a student ay my daughter's high school. To make things even worse, he was on the school football team and Carly was playing in the school band. This meant that Carly would have to see him playing football and hear his name announced over the PA system. She would have to see him occasionally in the halls laughing and joking with his friends, all the while trying to deal with the fact that she would never again be able to do those things with her brother. We realized, of course, that nothing about our situation was the son's fault, but it was just another thing that didn't seem fair. Hadn't our children been through enough already? Why did our daughter have to have this flaunted in our face? It was an extremely uncomfortable situation for all of us, especially Carly.
The only other time we heard anything about this man was on a Thanksgiving Day shortly after he had been granted house arrest. Apparently, he got into some kind of altercation with a brother-in-law and the police were called to the house. He was found to be in violation of the terms of his plea agreement and was sent back to jail to finish serving his remaining time. We did not hear anything more about that. I have no idea if he actually ever finished serving his time or not. It really no longer mattered to me what happened to him. His fate was not worth my wasting anymore time on him. I was done with him.
It did feel good not to have to go to the courthouse anymore, although, as I mentioned earlier, I was summoned for jury duty just a few months after the conclusion of our case. As fate would have it, I actually got further along in the jury selection process than I ever had before (or ever have since). I made it into the jury box to be questioned by the judge and lawyers to determine my fitness to serve on the jury. When they got to the question about my ability and willingness to be impartial to both sides in the case, I paused and thought carefully about my response. For the first time in my life, I had to say that I could not be impartial at all. I was still too angry about how I felt we had been treated by the police and the courts-actually how we had been treated by the entire legal system. I told this to the judge and the lawyers. They seemed to be a little taken aback. The next thing I know, the judge calls for the lawyers to meet with him in his chambers. They were gone for about 20 minutes while we all sat in the courtroom and waited for them to return. I'm not sure what happened in the judge's chambers, but when they returned the judge told me that it was too soon for me to have to be back in court and that I was excused. Perhaps they had looked up our case in the court records. Whatever the reason, I was grateful to be excused. It had been extremely difficult for me to even drive to that building that morning, let alone have to be back in a courtroom. I've been summoned for jury duty a number of times since, but so far I've never again gotten that closing to actually serving on a case. If I never I have to enter that courthouse again, it will be fine with me.
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