Murder most foul

I noticed the Palsgraf case at reference 1, in part because I had read about it a few days previous.

But to start at the beginning, a TLS which I had happened to pick up in Waitrose (reflecting its high class status) had about a third of a page given over to a £20 book by one Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich called 'The Fact of a Body'.

A book about the murder of a child in Louisiana which looked interesting, but a bit dear at £20. Interested enough to make enquiries of amazon, where I found that I could get a kindle copy for 99p. Not sure why this was; perhaps it was dished out more or less as a freebie to deserving customers - and while I have not done the sums I do buy quite a lot of books and DVDs from them - perhaps to the tune of a few hundred pounds a year. In any event, downloaded on the spot and now read.

The author comes from a rather dysfunctional immigrant family in New Jersey, a place called Tenafly just across the Hudson from Yonkers and New York. With dysfunctional appearing to include a father who drank too much and a grandfather who abused her over a period of some years. Abuse which was eventually discovered and stopped but otherwise brushed over. Life went on as before. At some point she went to law school and at another spent time as an intern with a law firm specialising in death penalty cases in Louisiana. Now more a writer than a lawyer.

While in Louisiana, she came across and made a study of the murder which is the subject of this book. The perpetrator came from a family which was both poor and dysfunctional - not a good combination in the US - and the circumstances of his birth were bizarre. The perpetrator was always odd, did not mix easily and knew that he had inappropriate feelings for children from quite an early age. Various offences in this connection and at least one prison term. Some time after which he murders a six year old boy - which, being in the US, is old enough to own a BB gun, just about lethal, although not relevant to the case. He goes through several trials, sits on death row for a few years and is now in prison for life with no parole. More bizarre in that his victim's mother visits, or at least did for a while. Although BH did not find this bit so bizarre: she thought that a mother might well do such a thing, would want to know.

The book is part story of the author's life, part story of a crime. Both, lightly fictionalised.

But also a story about how we come to apportion blame and to award punishment. A story according to which we have some facts about which there is not all that much disagreement. We then build a story around those facts, a story on the basis of which we apportion blame and award punishment. The catch being that the story that we build depends as much upon context as on the facts. Who is telling the story, why and to whom the story is being told. The whole context, to borrow a word from the last post, the terroir of the story. With the result that we can easily have wildly different stories about the same crime.

For what it is worth, my own view is that although any abuse in this case was premeditated, this not excluding it also being a spur of the moment, opportunistic thing, the murder was not premeditated. It just sort of happened. My view also, as it happens, of the Soham murders in this country, the subject of much lurid coverage for a while.

I am not sure that I am much the wiser after reading this grubby tale. I guess I stick with the line that while a perpetrator may not be to blame - nature, nurture or circumstances may have been too strong - that is not to say that we don't take him or her out of circulation. And there does have to be punishment even if we cannot manage correction - this last despite the correctional name of US prison services. And I remain an opponent of the death penalty, certainly in so far as normal, civilian, peacetime life is concerned.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/palsgraf.html.

Reference 2: http://alexandria-marzano-lesnevich.com/.

Reference 3: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/la-supreme-court/1478486.html.

Reference 4: http://lawcrawler.findlaw.com/LCsearch.html?client=lp&restrict=lp&entry=ricky%20langley.