No Remorse

The defendant stood ten feet in front of me, hands cuffed and feet shackled to a thick chain encircling his slender waist. His dress pants were pulled low, mid-butt, and his powerful shoulders looked like they could throw a hard punch. He stood stiff and straight, staring dead ahead. My husband, Craig, sat next to me, and our daughter Rebecca and her then-husband in a bench nearby. We were here for the sentencing of the man who had assaulted and robbed Rebecca when she was six months pregnant.

Rebecca had regularly walked to her nursing job at the hospital: two blocks on the busy urban street where she lived, then cut through the wealthy Guilford neighborhood to Union Memorial. She had grown up in this gritty Baltimore neighborhood; she had been two weeks old when we moved into a broken-down house on this street in 1981, when her father and I arrived to start a multiethnic church in this racially divided city.

That winter evening, as she’d crossed into Guilford, she noticed two young men walking toward her. She sensed trouble; they were too boisterous, “hopped up.” It was still light out, so she made eye contact and continued walking. But as one man stood lookout, the other came behind her, punched her several times, and pushed her to her knees.

“Stop! I’m pregnant!’ she yelled.

“Bitch, I don’t give a fuck.” The assailant demanded her purse. Rather than hand over a favorite thrift-store find, she dumped its contents on the ground. “Empty your pockets.”

When she stood to unzip her knee-length coat, he punched her in the head. “I didn’t tell you to stand up.”

“You told me to empty my pockets,” she retorted.

“Don’t make me get my Glock.”

“You haven’t got any Glock.”

“Take off your shoes.”

“No.”

He took her car keys and asked where she’d parked. She refused to answer. He took her iPhone and told her to start walking. She sprinted to the nearest house, fifteen feet away, and banged on the door.

“Oh, you goin’ for help?” he taunted, rooting through the scattered contents of her purse before fleeing.

The mugging of a pregnant nurse in a “safe” neighborhood incited so much outrage that police put detectives on the case (notable in light of Baltimore’s high murder rate at the time, as this was “only” assault, battery, and robbery). My daughter met with a police artist, and detectives matched that sketch with a person of interest. They showed her a photo. “That’s him,” she said. When they arrested the defendant, they found a cache of stolen cell phones in his room.

At the last minute, he’d changed his plea to guilty, and the assault and battery charges disappeared. Before sentencing, each side addressed the court.

The state’s attorney, a dark-haired woman in her thirties, suggested the defendant had targeted my daughter as particularly vulnerable because she was pregnant. “The victim can never again leave her house, or take her children outside, without worrying about what might happen. Her sense of security has been stolen.” This was true. A few days after the mugging, Rebecca had panicked when a flower delivery man tried to get her signature. Perhaps thinking of the bitter cold and the toddler in her arms, he had put his foot in the door. She’d slammed the door and angrily called his supervisor.

“Yet in spite of this,” the state’s attorney continued, “the victim hopes the defendant will turn his life around. She has asked for leniency.”

With little faith in the rehabilitative power of prison, my daughter didn’t see any point in the offender serving more than the seven months he’d already been locked up.

The public defender pled for leniency. The defendant “is only 21,” with no prior criminal convictions. He was living with his grandmother to “help her out” and was “looking for a job.” He had done “some volunteer work” cleaning streams. His parents were in the courtroom. “This is not some child of a crack-addicted mother and an absent father,” she said. I wondered if having supportive parents made him more culpable.

I pulled out my notebook and began jotting down notes. I’d need to write about this later; it’s how I process strong emotions. Like rage. Controlling my anger was absorbing most of my bandwidth, and I didn’t want to forget details.

A brown-shirted deputy swaggered over to my bench. She leaned over me.

“You can’t take down the address,” she said. “No writing.”

“What?” I was confused. Coincidentally, I’d started taking notes when the defense attorney mentioned the grandmother’s address.

“You can’t write down addresses,” she repeated. Stunned at what this implied about my motives, I started to answer, “I’m not —” but the judge was talking, and I wanted to hear him, and this large, angry woman was in my face. Chastised, I slipped my notebook into my purse.

The defense attorney told the perpetrator that he could address the court if he wanted. This, I thought, would be an appropriate time to express regret. Or at least pretend to. But he said nothing. His attitude was reflected in his ramrod-straight posture.

The judge said he took no joy in pronouncing sentence. “I am troubled by a certain viciousness in the attack,” he said. He sentenced the defendant to five years in jail, suspending three. With credit for time served, and good behavior, he’d be out in a year.

My husband had slipped a piece of paper out — he was carrying his sermon prep notebook — and had begun taking notes. I rolled my eyes at him; he hoped he could get away with it because he wasn’t looking down. But the deputy marched over again. Now she was irate.

“Give me your paper,” she demanded. My husband slowly passed it to her. Then she turned to me as I sat with my hands folded tightly in my lap. “Yours, too.”

Wide-eyed, I slipped my notebook out of my purse and ripped out the offending page, which had only a few words on it. I felt like a whole second case was going on here, and we’d been found guilty. She stormed away, satisfied.

The judge addressed the defendant, explaining his legal options going forward. Lawyers and deputies passed around forms. Finally, two deputies shuffled the defendant away. His family, seated behind us, was instructed to wait until he had cleared the hallway.

We rose and headed for the door. The deputy stopped us. The state’s attorney started to re-enter to speak to my daughter, but the deputy waved her out. “You wait out there,” she said. She turned to Craig and me.

“When I say ‘no writing,’ I mean no writing.”

“I’m a writer. He’s a pastor—” I wanted to explain that writing is what we do, but she interrupted.

“Ummm mmmh,” she wagged her head at me, with a “you’re getting on my last nerve” look. “I tried to tell you, but—”

My son-in-law folded his construction-hardened arms across his chest. A muscle in his cheek twitched. “Wait, we’re the ones being interrogated here?”

The deputy gave him a hard look, held up her hand at him, and turned to Craig and me.

“I balled up your paper and threw it away,” she said. I wondered what had happened to living in a democratic society but could see this going very badly, very quickly, ending with me wearing a pair of state-owned linked bracelets. Also, I don’t argue with people toting weapons and attitude. I kept my mouth shut. The deputy sauntered off.

In the hall, the state’s attorney pulled my daughter aside. “Don’t feel bad. The DOC (Department of Correction facility) is a country club compared to where’s he’s been.” The Baltimore City jail, our pre–Civil War holding pen, had been recently closed for decrepitude. Rebecca asked for the defendant’s address so she could write him. She hates writing: in high school, every paper was like a tooth extraction.

The mugger’s father thanked Rebecca for asking for a light sentence. “I tried to get him to stop hanging out with a bad crowd,” he said, choking up. Rebecca was weeping. “I’m sorry,” he said. He shook her hand, and her husband’s hand, and Craig’s hand, and finally mine. Craig said, “God bless you, sir,” and patted the man on his back.

As he turned to leave, I choked out, “I will pray for your son.” Most of the words running through my head for the last hour had been imprecatory, except for one fleeting thought: Jesus said to pray for my enemies. I had pushed that thought away, but it returned, quietly, insistently. So I had prayed, “God, save this sonofabitch.”

A block from the courthouse, raw sewage leaked from a broken pipe, the stench rising off the steaming street. In the car with Craig, I seemed to be the only one fuming. “Don’t you feel angry at his lack of remorse?” I accused.

“I didn’t expect remorse,” Craig said. “I’ve seen too many guys like him. Sure, I’m angry. He beat and humiliated my daughter.” He paused. “But mostly I feel sad. Another wasted life.”

I took a deep breath. I felt the city’s heat and anger rising off its streets.

Then Craig spoke. “I think that’s how it’s going to be at the last judgment.”

“No remorse? You think God will show people their sin, and they’ll shrug and say, ‘I did what I wanted.’”

“Yes, exactly. When given the opportunity, some people will still shake their fist at God.”

***

“No one comes out of this courthouse happy,” the state’s attorney had told us after the sentencing. I shared my daughter’s skepticism of prison as rehabilitative. Incarceration doesn’t change hearts. Heart change is God’s job. Forgiving enemies is mine.

Forgiving enemies doesn’t minimize or deny the offense; it only means I stop trying to exact punishment. I recognize that there is a Judge, and I am not Him.

Yet in that courtroom, I hadn’t wanted to forgive. I wanted to berate the defendant, sass the deputy, and put aside for the moment that I love Jesus. I hate the street culture that lures boys away from the counsel of their fathers, that hardens men so that they don’t feel remorse at beating up a pregnant woman, at choosing assault and robbery for a profession. As I’d clenched my hands in my lap and looked at the back of the perpetrator’s head, I’d understood that he was not the only one feeling no remorse.