NOTHING brought back the vividness and pain of the moral conflict in Steinbecks Of Mice and Men like this weeks capital punishment case in Florida of Martin Grossman. Like Lenny in Steinbecks story, Martin Grossman was a man of impulsive and compulsive behavior due to his mental disability. For each of them, respectively, in fiction and in real life, their worst and most uncontrollable behavior turned to to be murder itself.
By now Grossman has been executed. But up until the very last minute of his life, some Jewish groups were lobbying for the capital punishment decision to be reversed. Many Jews were praying for a last minute miracle.
I feel very conflicted about this.
First of all, I guess I should tell you I am conflicted about the death penalty, in general. On the one hand, I feel like no human being has the right to take another human beings life. No matter what.
We, granted with life by a Divine power, cannot make such a termination about another human being, who was granted with life by the same power we were. Place a murderer in a moat surrounded by alligators for the rest of his or her earthly life just dont be the one to take his or her life.
On the other hand, some human beings, crimes are so heinous and sick and creepy that they forfeit this right to life. Should we be the ones to decide? Should we be the ones to carry out the act of ending anothers life? Its complicated. How can we judge anothers life?
There is the concept of justice, though. There is the concept of being punished for ones crime. One of the seven Noahide laws is the system of setting up a count system, of paying a price for a wrong. Justice is a fundamental Biblical view, a bedrock governing human relationships and building a society.
Emotionally, too, there is something to the vindication for a victim. I think a victims needs should always exceed those of the perpetrator of the crime.
Some will say that keeping a criminal or murderer rotting in jail, suffering a life sentence, waiting to die, is more harsh and thus more appropriate than capital punishment. Death can be a reprieve, an escape, not a punishment.
I RESPECT the Jewish community for sensing a kinship and brotherhood with a fellow member of the tribe, member, a Jew, and doing what it can to avert his execution in this particular case, what with his limited mental capacity, as well as his troubled life in general (although, sadly, a troubled home life is often the truth for many convicted criminals, and, as painful as it is, cannot exonerate a criminal). All Jews are connected and we should and do feel a more intimate affinity for the plight of a fellow Martin Grossman.
Yet, what I feel even more strongly than that is this: a person brutally murdered an innocent police officer!
He was in his right mind enough to take back his handgun, as well as hers, his drivers license and his car key, before driving off to bury th evidence of his cold blooded murder!
This is who is being held up as an example of a tragic miscarriage of justice. As someone for whom we should be having Pslam vigils for?
There is something terribly amiss with this picture.
When the religious community is largely silent on child abuse, molestation and other horrible crimes, as well as corruption, which are very sadly becoming rampant in our community, how come it suddenly find its voice when it comes to a very sketchy capital punishment case involving a murder and an innocent loss of life?
What if the scenario were reversed? What if it were the Muslim from Fort Hood, who murdered in cold blood, who was up for capital punishment and the Muslim community lobbied for him, apologetically claiming he had subsequently found faith, repented and regretted his actions?
How would you feel about that?
Clemency is a legal concept. And so some Jewish community leaders rallied behind Grossman legally.
But what does it about a community that highlighted Grossmans case with a degree of compassion that we should really be feeling for the victim who was murdered?
I feel compassion for Grossman and his troubled life for his fate to be a cold blooded murderer. It is horrible. But there must be a distinction between a perpetrator and a victim! This seems to be disturbingly missing.
Be silent when religious people commit crimes? But find your voice when there are legal ways to exonerate and defend someone from committing the worst crime? It is shameful and terrible.
Is it really such a wonder then, if crime is becoming rampant in the Jewish community, when in a sense it is subtly being incubated?
There is something very simple at the heart of this, and that was a brutal murder of an innocent human life. As complicated as Grossmans life was, Grossman, a convicted murderer, still lived, albeit the horror of rotting in jail waiting to die, but still lived 26 years longer than his victim.
In these intervening years, Grossman found faith, in some way a source of meaning in his troubled life.
Granted he was publicly executed, but he also got to die with that comfort he found in faith. And so, instead of a convicted murderer and his community fighting his punishment, isnt part of coming into faith the understanding and the acceptance of punishment?
I believe it is a perversion of our sacrosanct Jewish morals, values and commandments to conveniently whip out the pikuach nefesh card for a convicted murderer, or the lashon hara card to protect an abuser or other criminal. Why are so many quick to judge others when it comes to the violation of ritual commandments, but suspend such judgement immediately and find the voice of the Jewish precept of judging favorably when it comes to, in some sense, protecting those who heinously violate the commandments concerning the people?
If one lives a life of fealty to the Torah, it seems to me one should not support or reject such major issues as major as capital punishment or abuse, based on the fact that the people involved are Jewish or religiously observant. There is nothing like being flexible with your convictions!
THE traditional rabbinic view of capital punishment is extremely restrained. When the Sanhedrin had the authority to carry out capital punishment, to say they it was reluctant to do so is an understatement. Some opinions among the rabbis assert that even carrying out a capital punishment once in 70 years is too much. The most liberal opinion regarding capital punishment is that once in seven years is too often!
Only the lone opinion of Rabban Gamaliel asserts that being conservative in capital punishment cases will lead to the chaos of more murders.
Jewish community leaders supporting Grossman were following the spirit of this tradition guarding the sanctity of life. Here was an opportunity to identify with and help a fellow Jew. But I am wondering, how should we relate to the criminal while still holding onto our cherished Jewish value of compassion just not at the expense of a miscarriage of justice?
I dont want to come off as self- righteous. Believe me, I have no answers, only more questions. I feel so sad for Martin Grossman that his destiny on this earth turned out to be that of a killer. Especially since I bet it did, tragically, stem from his mental disability. Do I feel one-hundred times worse for Peggy Parker who died at his hands? Obviously. Her loss is totally different.
Of Mice and Men has always been a real heartbreaker. Lennie never understood his own strength, and so his anger led to him murder. Im just so sad that that dimension of the novel turned out to be a true story with Martin Grossman. Of life imitating fiction. Or is it fiction imitating life? Complicated.
