NEWSBYLISA REA

On Tuesday, former Irish Republican Army (IRA) activist Pat Magee, who was convicted of the Brighton bombings in 1984, met Jo Berry, daughter of Sir Anthony Berry, one of the five victims killed in the blast.

Though Magee had been given eight life sentences, he was freed in 1999 under the negotiated terms of the Good Friday Agreement of 1999. Magee's conviction was based on his planning of the bomb and for attempting to kill British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was attending a conference at the Grand Hotel in Brighton (above), where the bomb was planted.

Magee and Berry met at the House of Commons, a high profile meeting place, hosted by The Forgiveness Project and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues.  The intention of the meeting was to open up a dialogue related to the blast. What took place is fascinating in light of what the ex-offender said publicly and also what the victim's daughter said. Did this public meeting bring healing of any kind to the victims or their family members? Is this an example of restorative justice at work?

For more about this event read the following articles, including coverage by The Times, a generic wire story posted by CNN News, and an article written before the event by The Forgiveness Project also printed by The Times. Each article is interesting in what is covered, what is not covered, and what is emphasized.

I recently wrote on graffiti vandalism in Los Angeles and how restorative justice could be applied to this problem. What I didn't know at the time was that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill here in California related to this problem in 2008. That bill, authored by Assemblyman Mike Davis (D-Los Angeles), required that convicted graffiti offenders clean up the mess they created and for one year keep it clean.
This reflects restorative justice in that the punishment fits the crime. The governor was right.

More than 600,000 incidents of graffiti were reported throughout the Los Angeles region in 2007. That's 40,000 more reports than the previous year. The cost of this problem to cities and counties is enormous. This law allows the offenders to take personal responsibility for their crimes. The law is mandatory, versus discretionary, for the court to sanction this kind of sentence but in this case it makes sense. Could the law have gone further? I think so. Victim offender meetings between property owners or public officials would be a good thing.

A recent story caught my eye. According to the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles tagger Cyrus Yazdani, who goes by Buket, has been sentenced to 3 years and 8 months for his tagging efforts.

This is not the first time this notorious tagger has been caught and fined. Yazdani, a 26-year old college graduate from San Jose State, is a prolific tagger who does his tagging in broad daylight. The amount of damage caused by Yazdani's graffiti is in the range of $150,000. And that's got to be on the low side. Most of the damage has been done in Los Angeles; authorities say he's tagged hundreds of freeway overpasses. Is this a fair and just sentence? What do you do with a serial tagger? How would a justice system based on the principles of restorative justice see this case?

On June 18th, the United States Supreme Court ruled by a 5-to-4 decision that prisoners have no constitutional right to DNA testing that might prove their innocence if they have been wrongfully convicted. That decision is one that will hurt crime victims in the U.S.

The five-justice majority found that this was a state issue instead of a federal one. In essence, state legislatures were doing enough already to remedy the problem of wrongful convictions. The opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. for the majority, said that to vote in favor of giving such rights to inmates would “short circuit what looks to be a prompt and considered legislative response.” It’s hard to agree with Chief Justice Roberts when 240 prisoners to date in the U.S. have been exonerated because of the use of DNA testing. Often the exoneration of these inmates has been due to the hard work of organizations like the Innocence Project and other organizations across the country. Without the use of DNA testing it is hard to think how these innocent prisoners would ever have seen the light of day.

But what concerns me as well is the number of crime victims who have been shafted yet again by the criminal justice system in the U.S.  They once thought their case was solved only to find years later, sometimes two decades later, that the wrong man was convicted and sentenced. What a blow! According to the Innocence Project, out of the 240 exoneration cases, some 103 of those cases also identified the actual perpetrator through that same testing.  DNA testing frees the innocent and catches real perpetrators. As a restorative justice advocate my question is : What on earth are we waiting for?