Kristine Phillips reports for the WaPo:
A heart-warming story from the Land of the Second Chance, right? Read on.
In 1991, Michigan man Gregory Green stabbed his wife in the face and chest, killing her and their unborn child. Then, he called 911 and waited for police to come.
After serving about 16 years in prison for murder, Green was released on parole with the support of family and friends, including a pastor who lobbied on his behalf and whose daughter Green would marry.
"Gregory and I were friends before his mishap and he was incarcerated," Fred Harris, a pastor in Detroit, wrote to the Michigan parole board in August 2005. "He was a member of our church ... I feel he has paid for his unfortunate lack of self control and the damage he has caused as much as possible and is sorry."
"If he was to be released he would be welcomed as a part of our church community and whatever we could do to help him adjust, we would," Harris wrote again a year later.
Green was released in 2008 and later married Faith Harris. They had two daughters, Koi, 5, and Kaliegh, 4.
A heart-warming story from the Land of the Second Chance, right? Read on.
Early in the morning of Sept. 21, 2016, Faith Harris-Green found herself bound with duct tape and zip ties in the basement of their home in Dearborn Heights, Mich., just outside of Detroit. Her foot had been shot and her face slashed with a box cutter, prosecutors say.
Her two teenage children -- Gregory Green's stepchildren -- were with her, dead of gunshot wounds.
She had watched them die. Her two younger children were dead upstairs, poisoned with carbon monoxide.
The killer was Harris-Green's husband, the same man whose freedom her father advocated for more than a decade ago.
As Green did when he killed his first wife, he called 911 and waited for police to come, authorities said. He had just shot his family and they were inside the house, he told officers.
Green is back in prison. Last week, he received what amounts to a life sentence. He'll be 97 by the time he's eligible for parole, according to the prosecutor's office.
During the sentencing hearing, Harris-Green, wearing a white turtleneck, spoke to her children's killer, perhaps for the last time. "You are a con artist. You are a monster. You are a devil in disguise. You are now forever exposed," she said as she stood behind a podium in a Wayne County courtroom. Her ex-husband, in a dark green jail uniform, sat stoically a few feet away, his back toward her.
No punishment will be enough for her children's deaths, Harris-Green said. "Not even torture and death would be justice," she said. "Your justice will come when you burn in Hell for all eternity for murdering four innocent children, all because you're insecure."
Death is not an option, unfortunately. Michigan has no death penalty, not even for a person who has killed six people on two separate occasions. Is Ms. Harris-Green's prediction of justice in the afterlife correct? God only knows.
His prison record provided nearly no trace of violence, no hint that years after he would be released, he would commit crimes more brutal than the first. His history while incarcerated appeared clean, if not perfect. Records show that although he was unable to explain the outburst that brought him to prison, he nevertheless followed the rules and stayed out of trouble.Prison and the outside world are different environments. Behavior in one does not necessarily predict behavior in the other.
Any word about this from our compassionate pastor friend?
Guess not.
When the second chance goes bloody, do the people who urged giving it admit error? Do they take any responsibility at all?
Not that I ever heard of.
What do you think the chances are that this pastor actually feels any regret (much less acts on it)?
What these people do instead is keep right on keepin' on, holding forth about how enlightened they are, while the rest of the world is soooo retrograde.
The reason they never admit error is ego, in part. But it's more than that, and worse. It's that such an admission would complicate their ideological certainty that criminals are victims and actual victims are human garbage.
This is the actual moral baseline of academia's and the Left's embrace of criminals. Remember this next time they give you one of their Holier-than-Thou lectures.
I'm not going to dump on him, under the circumstances.
One can feel for him in this particular case, yes. The problem is that his message of heedless "compassion" is an endlessly repeated part of the anti-DP crusade (see, e.g., the recent campaign in Nebraska), and those pushing it are unfailingly condescending and belligerent toward the majority who disagree with them.
You've been on the receiving end of this stuff as much or (very likely) more than I have.
It is past time for the abolitionist side to show some well-earned humility. But it will never happen.
One of the best pieces I have ever seen about the topic of false compassion. As fitting today as it was in 1965.
About 7 minutes in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_z_3o85cc4
Not sure whether it was the late 1700s or 1800s- but an English judge sentenced a man to hang for horse thievery. The horse thief approached the bench and begged the judge not to use such harsh punishment for a mere thief, the judge answered that "it's not for punishment I sentence you to death, but to ensure it does not happen again". I can't find the quote nor the judge, but it did happen and was a famous case when hangings were still charged for property crimes.