The child still suffers

Opinion

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Kevin Harvison

June 5, 2009

By Matt Lane The McAlester News-Capital Fri Jun 05, 2009, 06:42 AM CDT

Amid all the noise — both on the local and national stage — there must be time for the child.

The David Earls travesty has focused eyes on the criminal justice system and the inherent flaw of plea bargains.

In this case, a monster gets effectively one year in prison for forever scarring an innocent 5-year-old girl. One year.

Why did the District 18 District Attorney’s Office allow this to happen? We have heard differing explanations about whether this child could have testified by closed-circuit or whether she knew the difference between the truth and a lie. We have heard that she did qualify after we had been told she did not qualify.

The lawyers spin and the child still suffers.

The national media, in the form of Fox News’ Bill O’Rielly and Geraldo Rivera, have weighed in. Both expressed outrage, an outrage that is shared by many.

This newspaper has reported on the case and on the national attention it has garnered.

And the child still suffers.

The justice system should protect the weakest among us — the very young, the very old, those who suffer from mental problems or sickness. Justice is cold and heartless unless it also carries a stream of mercy and compassion for the victims of unspeakable crimes. This stream should manifest itself in proper punishment for those who would commit these atrocities.

The justice system should do this but, sadly, often times it does not.

This case, this horrible case of a predator preying on a defenseless child, was handled by a justice system that seemingly forgot about mercy, compassion and just punishment.

Why wasn’t this man brought before a jury of his peers, his crimes laid bare in all their horror? There were surely ways to admit this girl’s testimony without causing her too much pain.

Why did the system let her down so completely?

And the child still suffers.

Perhaps there may be other legal remedies to pursue — a civil rights violation, maybe — that can at least ameliorate this terrible miscarriage of justice.

When she is older, this girl will come to know how the justice system failed to protect her. How the justice system forgot to be her advocate. How the justice system let the monster who attacked her suffer so little in comparison to what she will suffer all the days of her life.

She will come to know all of this.

And she will know that the child still suffers.

Matt Lane is the editor of the McAlester News-Capital. Send him hate mail or encouragement to: Editor, P.O. Box 987, McAlester, OK, 74501. Call him at 421-2022 or send an e-mail to editor@mcalesternews.com.

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