Voice

In a criminal case, the victim has a right to make a statement after the defendant is sentenced. This is called the victim's allocution. It is the single time that the victim is able to address the defendant directly, to speak her mind, to spill out everything that she's been choking down for months and months. I was witness to many of these allocutions when I was a prosecutor. Sometimes they were quiet, almost whispers. Other times, they were raging storms--screaming, crying, shaking of fists, pointing of fingers. There were some who wished the defendants peace; others wished them dead. No matter what, they were always heartbreaking. It was hard to watch and not feel like an intruder. Hard to see a person bearing the unbearable.

Today, I was on the other side of the courtroom for my first victim's allocution as a defense attorney. I'd been dreading it for weeks, knowing that this time I was going to be sitting next to the person toward whom whatever was coming would be addressed. I wouldn't be able to get up, I wouldn't be able to leave if I couldn't bear hearing it. I would have to sit there, on the side of the person who had caused so much pain to others, because that is my job. That is part of what I have to do and I knew that I would simply have to get through it somehow. My greatest fear was that I would not be able to do it. What if they hated me too? What if they thought that I was somehow now a part of what caused them so much grief? How would I face them? I couldn't even think about it without crying.

I prepared my client for what was going to happen the best that I could, explaining the process and letting him know what to expect. I told him that part of making things right was letting the family express their sorrow, their anger, their loss, anything that they needed to say. So I sat there today, next to my client, and listened to a mother tell how the last words from her son were that he had just proposed to his girlfriend--how he was going to spend the rest of his life with her. And he did. Three hours later, they were both dead. I looked at her as she spoke, thinking that it would be wrong of me to look away; that it would be disrespectful not to soak every bit of it in. I could feel tears coming and I knew the harder I tried not to cry the more they would come. So I sat and listened to her story, with tears rolling down my face. I felt ashamed, like I had no right to cry for her son, but I couldn't help it. I thought of my own boys and how no mother should ever have to bury a child.

It was in this moment that life showed how it is full of unexpected grace. She addressed me from the witness stand. For a second I froze. I steadied myself for her anger at my tears, for the presumptuousness I would have to cry for her son when I represented the man who had caused his death. She looked at me and said, "I know this is hard for you. I want you to know I don't blame you. It's okay."

Then she moved from the witness stand and came to my table and put her hand on my arm, nodding to me before she went back to her seat in the audience. It was one of the most heartwrenching experiences I've ever had, but I am glad that I went through it because it left me with the certainty of the good in people. I found out later that she had been told about me before the allocution by some of the people in the courtroom--about my past with other cases, about the sort of person I am. I have always been humbled by the way the people I work with care about me, by the way they consider me family and look out for me; but this was so unexpected and such a kindness to me that I am still a little shaken by it.

So my day in court is done. My client thanked me before he was taken back to the holding cell. The families said their goodbyes to each other and returned to the lives they are trying to piece together. The fact that I managed to get through it pales in comparison with the other people who had to get through it as well. Still, I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else today other than where I was.