The accused CraigsList killer, medical student Philip Markoff, is dead of an apparent suicide. He maintained his innocence and died an innocent man, depriving the family of the victim, Julissa Brisman, of a trial, a conviction, and a sentence. They will autopsy the body and investigate the jail. They will opine on why Markoff did this, knowing full well that the only person with the answer is Markoff and they’re just making noise.
Like it or not, Markoff is dead and that’s the end of it. But Doug Berman at Sentencing Law & Policy raises a very provocative question.
Of course, if Philip Markoff truly was innocent of murder, his suicide compounds the tragedy of a wrongful accusation (and further heightens the risk that the real killer will never be sought or found). But assuming he was guilty, my first reaction here is to be pleased. By killing himself, Markoff saved a lot of time, money and energy for those who would be tasked with prosecuting and defending him. And the family of his victim would, I hope, get some measure of closure from Markoff’s death.
Doug describes his position as “utilitarian”, sparing everyone the trouble and expense of a trial and ending the matter with little muss and fuss. But he’s put his position out there for scrutiny, realizing that others may see things differently.
I wonder, however, if everyone share my reaction, which is obviously very utilitarian. For anyone who embraces a more retributivist or expressive/educative or even restorative justice perspective, perhaps Markoff’s death is more frustrating than pleasing. By taking his own life, Markoff in a sense was able to escape the traditional societal process of seeking and imposing justice on a wrong-doer. (I suppose a deeply religious retributivist might take comfort in the notion he will meet justice in the afterlife, but I am not even sure if a belief in this kind higher justice is enough to make one pleased Markoff sped his own journey to the afterlife.)
I’ve no doubt that there are many people who are of the view that if anyone accused of a crime cares to take his own life, we would be remiss not to offer them the rope.
Some of the commenters to Doug’s post find his “utilitarian” view to be heartless (and one call’s it mindless, though it’s anything but). Think of the fellow who brings a gun to a work and mows down a dozen unsuspecting co-workers before turning the gun on himself. Do we question his suicide? No, because we’re comfortable with the fact of his guilt and his choice of outcomes. That he executed sentence on himself takes the onus off us. Hey, his choice, both in the act and the conclusion.
We can’t say that here. We don’t know whether Markoff killed himself because he’s guilty or something else. And we’ll never know.
What if he left a suicide note that stated he was guilty, guilty as sin, and he couldn’t live with himself? Would that change our view?
The family of the victim feels that Markoff has stolen their right to closure. While it’s all academic now, the notion that a conviction somehow makes the pain of a murdered child go away is usually mistaken. After they achieve “closure” by conviction and sentence, they realize that it was a false hope. There’s no closure. Just a hole that can never be filled. For the sake of the families, I wish there was closure. They deserve some measure of comfort for their loss. They latch onto the prosecution because there is nothing else to grab. It’s not much.
By committing suicide, Philip Markoff did one of the few things he could to control his own fate. He could have stood his ground and fought, but he chose not to do so. Does that mean he was guilty or had given up hope?
Clearly, the Markoff suicide brings the issue of guilt to an end. There will be no trial. There will be no witnesses, no arguments, no risk of an acquittal or conviction. There will be no cost and no spectacle. It is very utilitarian.
And yet, it feels like such a poor way to reach a conclusion. My own view is that a suicide, under these circumstances, is a very unsatisfying end to this case, but then no death sits well with me, with certain exceptions for very certain reasons. While I can appreciate Doug’s perspective, I can’t be pleased. Not at all. There will be no applause for this suicide here.
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Some columnist for the Boston Globe waxed poetic about Markoff’s “narcissism” and more or less gloated over the death, which I guess is another way of venting frustration over the blow to circulation, since there will be no sensational trial.
Media “opinion makers” and prosecutors have a lot in common at that level: you get that rush from leading the masses into a feeding frenzy over the latest monster. Often times there really is a monster but sometimes there isn’t, yet that seems not to matter so much after a while. Getting out in front of the frenzy and leading it does. It brings power. After a time you are drunk with it, and the question of whether there’s really any reason for the frenzy fades into near irrelevance.
The Boston Globe columnist is a case in point. While Markoff was living the use of “alleged”, like “alleged craigslist murderer” is obligatory because there has been no conviction and we must respect the process as the arbiter of truth. Well, now Markoff is dead and the process says he died innocent of the alleged crimes but suddenly that doesn’t matter – we all really know he was guilty and the vaunted “process” was thus destined to be a sham: it had no real purpose other than – what? – to provide a platform for posturing, primarily for prosecutors and newspaper columnists.
So when the columnist calls the dead Markoff a narcissist he knows whereof he speaks and is projecting.
I don’t know how victims’ families can find comfort, or “closure” from any of it. And you are so right – they never do. Even when the perpetrator is executed, the survivors most often claim that it wasn’t enough, and of course it isn’t, because it doesn’t solve anything. I’m not sure imprisonment solves much either.