Five Years

When I was 24 a friend of mine was killed in the street.

I can never know exactly what happened, but my friend was (in my considerable past experience) entirely non-violent and someone hit him outside a fast-food restaurant one night. His head hit the ground and basically that was that. 

With really only evidence from the puncher, who portrayed the incident as a ‘fight’, there was never going to be a murder charge here, and the judge eventually handed down a five-year sentence for manslaughter. Of course, it is only post-conviction that you find out that the guy has only come out of prison two weeks before and has ‘previous’ as long as your arm.

I felt five years was light, and looked into it a little – and actually it was at least consistent with sentences given out in similar cases at that time. Meaning that if it was too short, all such sentences were too short. But still, five years (and out in half that) seemed a small price for a life.

You know where I am going here don’t you?

One punch. A fall. Five years.

A gun. Several shots through a locked door (you do wonder why she felt the need to lock it don’t you?). Five years.

OK – different legal systems and twenty years apart (so not a like-for-like) and it does seem South Africa has a more-relaxed attitude to death than we do here. But it seems a very small price to pay for ending someone’s life in the way Oscar Pistorius did.

Don’t know about you, but I feel no sense of justice today.

I have two other thoughts here.

Firstly – guns never help. Without a gun there can be a lot of shouting, but a gun and an angry man escalates things rapidly.

Secondly – televising trials turns them into a circus, and that is no way to do justice.