Democracy is a beautiful idea. We all get together and decide what’s best for the greater good, through open discussion, while eagles and butterflies flit above in an aerial display of peace and justice.
Life is fair. And Just. And beautiful.
And then you have the courts.
While it’s a lovely idealistic notion that each and every person gets a say in every single thing that happens, it’s obviously not practical. So we designate people, allegedly those among us who are best-suited for the task, to be our judges, our parole boards, our keepers.
But what happens when the keepers mess it up? Who keeps the keepers in line?
In the case of Eddie Taibi, a Howard Beach resident who accidentally shot a toddler while hunting on legal ground, an upstate New York parole board committed a terrible error. Taibi has obviously accepted his sentence; he has served 27 months as one who is described as a “model” prisoner. He has established and maintained good relationships with prison guards and staff and gets along well with other inmates.
These observations and opinions of Taibido do not come as a sympathetic consequence of his story. They are based on many hours of interview and conversation with Taibi about the incident, the sentencing and prison life. On a visit to see Eddie Taibi over the summer at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in upstate New York, it was very apparent that his life in prison was essentially without problem or complication. He was repeatedly greeted by staff and fellow prisoners alike in the large common room where inmates gather for visiting hours. He was a man obviously determined to do the right thing and atone for a fatal mistake.
In addition to his exemplary behavior, Taibi had the support of the family of Charly Skala, the toddler he accidentally shot, who asked the judge in a poignant letter to commute his sentence to community service where he could speak about the dangers of hunting. He was a man who was waiting to start over again.
He made a terrible mistake and took total responsibility for it. Even though there was a solid chance a jury would have let him go, he went to jail rather than cause any more pain.
Now he has been denied parole; he is punished for having chosen to spare the victim’s family any more pain. Once again on these editorial pages we are presented with the opportunity to demonstrate how our system fails. On both sides. Over the last several weeks we have on more than one occasion demonstrated the “misjudgment” of the judiciary.
Taibi remains in prison at the hands of a parole board that is apparently no more accountable to society than Justice Evelyn Laporte, who set free the killer of Police Officer Peter Figoski. Or a corrections facility board in El Paso Texas who freed an illegal Chinese immigrant that returned to the original scene of his crime, this time to bludgeon his former victim to death.
How many times do we need to have it thrown in our faces that sometimes the people who make these decisions need oversight?
Bad things happen. They always will. Unfortunately we will never eradicate evil. But we can choose how we respond to it.
We must also establish a path that separates bad things devoid of evil, like accidents. And when our courts stop responding with a fitting amount of care? When lives are thrown around like old paperwork? That’s when we have to do something.
There must be a starting point and as we see it this effort to keep the keepers in line must begin with the people we have elected to represent our social and moral compasses–politicians.
To our local elected officials we say, we have a problem. Now we need a solution.
