“How could you do that to me?” John is more or less shouting. That too is a novelty. “You didn’t make her do it. But me? You didn’t even ask if I’d mind. And you told me to watch it again and again.” ‘Her’ is Cassie, of course. And Banion is right- right about a lot.
George drops his face into his hands for some time before finally turning to the window and peering down to the canopy of treetops in the parkway five floors below. No matter how equable and kind he aspires to be, how Christ-like in the way his father taught, he knows himself well enough to have predicted that his reaction to John was going to be anger. Worse, outrage. The sad man weeping in that chair betrayed the judge’s trust, including by revealing himself as an outrageous nut. And he also committed a serious crime, wreaking havoc in George’s life at a time when he was already on his heels.
But he feels very little of that. Instead, still his father’s son, he finds he is chastening himself. Because he failed mightily. He was too upset by his own secret crisis to consider anything besides escape. Knowing the profoundly disturbing quality of those images, he inflicted them on John without a second thought about the consequences. And the judge sees that his failures are not without their harsher ironies either. Pivoting under the weight of the bad old past, he nonetheless remained its captive; it was vestiges of old-fashioned chivalry that made him put aside any thought of asking Cassie to take on the task. And the truth, as John has clearly sensed, is that Cassie would have been far better equipped for the job. She might not have buffed her nails or microwaved a bag of popcorn while she watched, yet Cassie at some level is the worldliest person in these chambers when it comes to the subject of women and men. The tape would have infuriated her, fed her certainty about the proper outcome in the case. But she would have handled the tape far more calmly than John for one overriding reason: it would not have told her anything she had long tried to avoid knowing about the human universe-or herself.
“And you actually want to let those boys go,” John cries. “You’re willing to let them do all of that”-he is looking for a word, but it defies him- “all those terrible, terrible things, and you are actually thinking about letting them go when they have to be punished.”
“John,” Judge Mason says. He steps around his desk to comfort the man, but a protective pat on the shoulder is as far as he feels safe to go. “John, you should have said something.”
“That was worse!” John heaves a gale and bawls harder. “Judge,” he says, “Judge, I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
What sense do human beings ever make? George thinks. All of us. Each of us. The iron-headed logic of the law, which George has blithely mouthed, is that John should have spoken up. But to fully contemplate John’s situation for a moment is to recognize how impossible that was. Could insular John Banion, so shocked and overwrought by what those images stimulated in him-could that man have admitted as much to anybody else? No wonder he felt certain that the judge would have been disappointed in him.
And there was one further rub: saying something would have required Banion to stop watching the video.
“John, I’m very sorry,” the judge says and is struck at once by how much he means it. This is clearly the worst part: in his blindness, George has laid waste to a perfectly useful human being. Left to himself, John might have avoided forever what the judge forced him to confront. “Truly, John, I am sorry.”
He realizes that there is probably not a word he can say that will be right, but his apology makes Banion howl again.
“Don’t be noble!” he shouts. “You always want to be the best person. I’m the one who’s sorry.” The cycle plays out again here as it undoubtedly has in private for weeks: rage, then shame. Banion enters another prolonged period of weeping, then with his livid face and running eyes, suddenly looks straight at George for the first time.
“Forgive me,” he says. “Please, forgive me. Can you forgive me, Judge?”
Forgiveness, George thinks. Confession alone might not be good for the soul. But forgiveness always is. What a slender, simple thing it is that has chased around these chambers for weeks like a yearning spirit.
“I forgive you, John,” he says. “I do, I truly do.” He pats John’s shoulder one more time. Banion, in the chair, is now spinning his thin brown hair.
“I’m just no good at this,” he tells the judge.
“At what?”
Banion weeps and weeps before he says, “At being a human being.”
21
NO. 94-1823
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT
People of the State )
Appeal from the Superior )
Court of Kindle County vs. ) )
Jacob I. Warnovits )
Kellen Cook Murphy )
Trevor Witt )
Arden Van Dorn )
Before Mason, Purfoyle and Koll, JJ.
Justice Mason delivered the Opinion of the Court:
This case comes before the Court on the appeal of the four defendants from their convictions on charges of criminal sexual assault and the resulting six-year penitentiary sentences imposed on them in the Superior Court of Kindle County. For the reasons stated below, this Court affirms.
As crimes so often do, this case has riled passions, broken hearts, and left behind a wake of lives forever disturbed. At its core, it asks us to reconsider a question the law has long pondered: how long, and under what circumstances, punishment may be delayed before the balance of justice tips against it?
[Cassie, pls insert your draft’s Statement of Facts here.]
The statute of limitations in our state generally bars felony prosecutions brought more than three years after the crime. [Cassie, fill in cite for the statute, please.] The parties’ briefs discuss at length the traditional policy considerations, which, from the recorded debates, appear to have influenced our legislature in creating this law: recognitions that witnesses’ memories dim with time; that a defense becomes more difficult to mount as evidence is dispersed; and that prompt prosecution maximizes deterrence and prevents the improperly motivated revival of long-ignored offenses. See e.g., Toussie v. United States, 397 U.S. 112, 114-115 (1970).
Yet as Justice Holmes taught us long ago, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” [Pls chk quote and get cite. The Common Law?] Statutes of limitations also recognize that human beings change with time. None of the familiar purposes of the criminal law-incapacitation, deterrence or retribution-are fully served by punishing those who have lived blamelessly over a considerable period since their crime, and so the law allows them to go forward without the anxiety of potential prosecution. [Cassie, cite Marion case and various commentaries collected in Sapperstein’s brief.]
The precise circumstances under which prosecution is barred by the passage of time are a judgment left to the legislature. This Court’s task is simply to assign to the statute’s words the meanings its authors intended. [cite cases] Our legislators provided that the three-year limitations period is suspended while a defendant’s affirmative steps to conceal his crime render the occurrence of the offense unknown. [cite statute] The defendants argue that this provision was wrongly applied in this case. They concede that the victim was unconscious when she was assaulted, but they maintain she knew enough from her physical condition in the aftermath to inform authorities that she had been raped. The conscientious trial judge, who heard the testimony on this question, disagreed. He found that, in light of the victim’s age and experience, the defendants’ concealment deprived her of a sufficient basis to make a credible report to authorities. The defendants deem that conclusion a reversible error of law, pointing out that another limitations exception is specifically addressed to underage victims, and that the provision would have barred this prosecution from being commenced. Accordingly, they contend that the victim’s age was not a proper consideration here.