No, not the sentence. The period of time between a shot fired and the fulfillment of the final element of a murder charge. The ABA Journal reports that Police Officer Walter Barclay died this week. According to the Bucks County Coroner, it was a homicide. The bullet that allegedly ended P.O. Barclay’s life was fired during a beauty shop burglary by William Barnes. Forty years ago. (Here too.)
It’s not like Barnes got away with it. He was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to ten to twenty years. Barnes is now 71 years old.
Lest we feel too sorry for old man Barnes, he left Officer Barclay a paraplegic, with a life of misery ahead of him.
Since there is no statute of limitations for murder, and the final element, death, can take a while to occur, there is nothing conceptually out of line with the idea that William Barnes could be subject to prosecution. But there are some problems. First, as noted by lawyer Jeffrey Lindy in the article, it’s a little hard to establish a direct medical connection between a shot fired and death 40 years later. People eventually die. While under chaos theory there is a connection between everything in the world, the direct connection needed to prove a crime will be a little more difficult to prove (though, as noted here with disturbing frequency, the nexus between act and result is becoming increasingly distant for a conviction).
Second, there comes a point where it ends. No matter whether it is a legally viable prosecution, 40 years later is just too long. Had Barnes somehow evaded prosecution, I would come out on the other side of this argument, and there would be no period of time that would justify ignoring a murder (if murder it was). The message cannot be that if you can hide from a murder long enough, you get away with it.
But Barnes got caught. Barnes did his time. And soon enough, the 71 year old Barnes will answer for his conduct yet again, no matter what we do to him here on earth. I can see how a prosecutor might view this as a chance to take an old man and make the remainder of his life as miserable as possible. Vengeance, hatred and anger are powerful motivations, especially when they are felt by someone who believes that the are acting for the greater good. They know they got Barnes once, but they want to get him again. They want to end his life in as much pain as Officer Barclay. It’s not hard to understand.
But enough is enough. It won’t change the pain of Officer Barclay’s life, or bring him back from death. And it will not stop Barnes from meeting his maker soon enough.
It’s not like Barnes got away with it. He was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to ten to twenty years. Barnes is now 71 years old.
Lest we feel too sorry for old man Barnes, he left Officer Barclay a paraplegic, with a life of misery ahead of him.
Since there is no statute of limitations for murder, and the final element, death, can take a while to occur, there is nothing conceptually out of line with the idea that William Barnes could be subject to prosecution. But there are some problems. First, as noted by lawyer Jeffrey Lindy in the article, it’s a little hard to establish a direct medical connection between a shot fired and death 40 years later. People eventually die. While under chaos theory there is a connection between everything in the world, the direct connection needed to prove a crime will be a little more difficult to prove (though, as noted here with disturbing frequency, the nexus between act and result is becoming increasingly distant for a conviction).
Second, there comes a point where it ends. No matter whether it is a legally viable prosecution, 40 years later is just too long. Had Barnes somehow evaded prosecution, I would come out on the other side of this argument, and there would be no period of time that would justify ignoring a murder (if murder it was). The message cannot be that if you can hide from a murder long enough, you get away with it.
But Barnes got caught. Barnes did his time. And soon enough, the 71 year old Barnes will answer for his conduct yet again, no matter what we do to him here on earth. I can see how a prosecutor might view this as a chance to take an old man and make the remainder of his life as miserable as possible. Vengeance, hatred and anger are powerful motivations, especially when they are felt by someone who believes that the are acting for the greater good. They know they got Barnes once, but they want to get him again. They want to end his life in as much pain as Officer Barclay. It’s not hard to understand.
But enough is enough. It won’t change the pain of Officer Barclay’s life, or bring him back from death. And it will not stop Barnes from meeting his maker soon enough.
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Personally, I think Barnes only made a down payment on his debt to society, and I’m ready for him to pay the remaining balance. But I am also fascinated with the cause-effect question that’s being raised. In a society where we already have difficulty keeping convicted criminals in jail (witness the fatal Connecticut home invasion recently) I wonder how complicated it might become. I”>http://underthenews.blogspot.com/2007/08/longest-murder-can-it-take-41-years-to.html”>I blogged about this case, too.
When I read about the 10-20 year sentence for the attempted, it struck me as fairly light, especially for the time. But the venal act was the shooting, not whether it fortuitously missed another person, struck but only injured another person or killed another person.
The act committed by Barnes, shooting a police officer, was known to the judge at the time of sentence. Still, the judge imposed a sentence of 10-20 years. Do we now look back and say that was an insufficient sentence, and therefore we should punish Barnes again?
If we assume the causal connection between the shooting and Officer Barclay’s death, which is a huge assumption but not one we can determine based upon the dearth of medical evidence, do we superimpose our current vision of justice on an act committed and punished 40 years ago? I can understand your “downpayment” position, but if the price was established in 1966, who are we to adjust it for inflation now?
I must be missing something, because those articles don’t even discuss this question: How does a conviction for attempted murder not jeopardy-bar a prosecution for murder when the victim dies?
Ron said: “[America is] a society where we already have difficulty keeping convicted criminals in jail . . . “
Maybe the real reason so many convicted criminals in jail/prison are released is because we put more people in prison than any other civilized nation in the world. See http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aaprisonpop.htm
The more of us in prison, the more of us who will eventually be released.