I am no fan, nor defender, of Tom Coleman. I don't feel jail time would have been a "miscarriage of justice," but I do feel justice was served. Tom got a stiff sentence, a 7 year prison sentence suspended for 10 years--no alcohol, no guns, can't leave Ellis County without his probation officer's permission, a $7,500 restitution payment to Swisher County; he can never again work as a police officer. Now that one's good for Tom, and good for all of us!
Jail time for Tom would have been revenge for the jail time the Tulia defendants served. Our justice system really shouldn't be about revenge, but it is. A nicer word is retribution, but it means about the same thing.
Our justice system is based on retributive justice. Biblical justice is restorative justice, making things right. Tom's sentence approached restorative justice. In retributive justice, the model our system is based on, Tom should have served time.
Tom's victims received a miscarriage of retributive justice. Tom got restorative justice in a retributive system. And that ain't right!
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Coleman received restorative justice
Rev. Charles Kiker of Tulia Friends of Justice left these comments in the post below regarding the outcome of Tom Coleman's perjury trial. The Amarillo Globe News claimed that any more punishment than probation would have been a "miscarriage of justice." I wanted to make sure Grits readers saw what he has to say.
Here's the counter-argument: The issue regarding punishment shouldn't be what Coleman lied about, it's WHY he lied. At the time he told this particular fib he was testifying in court attempting to misrepresent the facts in order to secure a final conviction. That he lied about stealing gas isn't so important as that the REASON he lied was to obtain a wrongful conviction.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it would have been a lot cleaner if the statute of limitations hadn't run out on his lies in the original trials. As Crime and Federalism says, juries love police, so I doubt he'd have received prison time in any event.