I (along with eleven other local citizens) sent a man to the state penitentiary yesterday.

I was sitting in the jury deliberation room, writing "guilty" in tiny block letters on a slip of paper, and it was rather intimidating to think how much this could change the defendant’s life.

I was pretty darn confident that he was guilty, of course, or I wouldn’t have voted the way I did. But if you’ve ever heard a trial, I think you might know what I mean. It’s sort of like being told to build a foundation with Swiss cheese. You only get so much information, and you have to make your determination based on that alone. You can’t speculate. You can’t ask questions that the lawyers didn’t ask. You’re given only what they give you, and it’s never 100% of the facts.

Like, for example, we knew the fellow had had his driving license revoked prior to the incident in question. We didn’t know why. It could have been revoked because of a medical condition like epilepsy, or it could have been revoked because of misuse, like drunk driving. We didn’t know.

However, the rest of the jury and I felt we had enough facts to convict the fellow on both counts, beyond a reasonable doubt. It didn’t even take long – only a half hour. But then you start to think, man, you’re taking another person’s life into your hands. You’d better be right about it. So I felt this pit in my stomach. I wholly believed I was doing the right thing…I just didn’t like having the power of being able to do it (even if I was sharing it with eleven others who were equally convinced).

After we delivered our verdict, we returned to the jury room to await our final dismissal. The judge came in and thanked us for doing our duty to society and giving up our time for so many days. And then he said, "I know that giving a guilty verdict is not always an easy thing to do, so I thought you all might rest easier if I gave you some additional facts."

The defendant is a chronic repeat offender. He lost his license almost 10 years ago for driving under the influence multiple times. He was informed at the time that driving without a license thus constituted a felony, but he kept doing it. He had been arrested multiple times before and had served time in jail twice already for it (once for 18 months, once for 3 years, once for 4 years). In fact, yesterday at 1:45, he was supposed to be sentenced for the same crime in a previous incident. They held off on that one, though, because we were deliberating two additional charges.

This time, he was charged not only with driving without a license but also for operating a motor vehicle with intent to flee. He did some really dangerous stuff, trying to escape the deputy sheriff, then a state trooper, then local police. He cut off a semi on the interstate at 75 mph. He almost cause a collision on a state highway. And he raced into downtown just as the university football game was getting out, endangering literally thousands of people. He almost ran over two foot patrol cops who were directing traffic, was rammed by a state trooper vehicle in order to stop the flee, damaged public property, and then tried to flee on foot. Many people could have been hurt or killed by his recklessness.

What do you do with a person who shows such blatant disregard for society’s rules and regulations? Over the last ten years, he has spent eight and a half of them in custody in three separate runs, but every time he gets out, he quickly breaks the same laws and is quickly apprehended, tried and convicted once again.

The judge, of course, is limited by statute as to how much prison time he can impose upon this man. I kind of hope he can require each count (3 of them, now) to be served consecutively. That ought to at least get our society through 2018 before he’s out on the streets again. But I don’t know what the judge can or will do.

Still…the defendant is a man. He has (or had) a mother and a father, and maybe some siblings. Maybe he has a wife and children. He has friends and other relatives. Maybe he believes in God. Maybe he’s Catholic, like me, but nobody ever taught him what that means. I don’t know why he makes such stupid choices, I only know that we as a society must stop him before he hurts somebody.

I have mixed feelings about social reform programs used by prisons. I think they work sometimes on the right people, but not everybody. I think there are a lot of people doing time who aren’t getting the help they need…or who are rejecting it because they’d rather "be their own gods" so to speak and pooh-pooh anything society asks of them.

On the other hand, I believe 100% in the power of God to reach into a person’s soul and drive out the evil, replacing it with holiness. So I am going to pray that such a thing will happen to this man, that the power of God will reform him. I hope you’ll join me in this. His name is Christopher.

Also, please pray for a girl I ran into on cyberspace. Her handle is "Harmony Tiger" and she is 17, pregnant, and considering abortion.

--Sparki