June 12, 2001

4:38 PM

Families forgive driver who caused death of childrenCan death-penalty advocates bring themselves to this level of forgiveness? “The parents of four of the five victims of Sunday’s tragedy at Lingwick have asked authorities to withdraw charges filed Monday against Steve Rousseau, 21, the driver of a car that plunged into a quarry.... ‘We forgive Steve Rousseau and we’d like the charges against him lifted. He already feels a great deal of pain over what happened, which was an accident. He’s a little guy who has already been devastated by the burden placed on him. We don’t want to make matters worse,’ says Christian Morin, father of Marie-France. ‘We have no grievance with him.’ ” The Crown will prosecute anyway. (Also second article. All in French.)
posted by joeclark (15 comments total)

Personally, I prefer heavy-handed rhetoric in my own language. How do I say in French that there's a difference between a driving accident and intentionally blowing 19 kids and 149 adults to smithereens?
posted by rcade at 4:51 PM on June 12, 2001

hold on, jupiter, my french linguist is making the translation. was the driver drinking? will the familys' forgiveness effect this mans sentence. And who killed 168 people with a car...ohhh i see, the ah, comparison. From what i hear, heavy-handed in french is much more polite.(though jupiter keeps directing me to the utility closet when i ask him where the bathroom is located)
posted by clavdivs at 5:08 PM on June 12, 2001

It's food for thought. Nothing heavy-handed. And no reference to any people except those involved in the accident.

But you knew that.
posted by joeclark at 5:36 PM on June 12, 2001

knew what?
posted by clavdivs at 5:50 PM on June 12, 2001

Knew what?

That Kottke is the bestest bloggeur there is!
posted by joeclark at 6:04 PM on June 12, 2001

Personally, I prefer heavy-handed rhetoric in my own language. How do I say in French that there's a difference between a driving accident and intentionally blowing 19 kids and 149 adults to smithereens?

Il y a un grande difference entre un accident de voiture et 19 jeune mort, et utilisant une panne pour détruire 149 personnes.

Okay, my French sucks.. but at least I can ham my way through without using babelfish (except as a dictionary damnit!).
posted by wackybrit at 6:13 PM on June 12, 2001

joeclark, the fools job is yours. joeclark+strawdog= warbling minutia. that what i know.
posted by clavdivs at 6:21 PM on June 12, 2001

I'd call "Can death-penalty advocates bring themselves to this level of forgiveness?" heavy-handed. Capital punishment opponents only want to hear from the families of crime victims if they oppose execution. The vast majority of the survivors in the McVeigh case wanted him to die, but I'm sure you'll tell me that's irrelevant.

Forgiveness isn't really the issue anyway. I don't think many people supported McVeigh's execution out of a refusal to forgive him, and I suspect that most opponents of the death penalty didn't forgive him either. The crux of the issue is whether a just society has any business murdering its most heinous criminals. I think we may never have a better example justifying the punishment than the late Timothy McVeigh.
posted by rcade at 6:28 PM on June 12, 2001

I forgive him. Now get him the hell off the planet.

et alors?
posted by christina at 7:53 PM on June 12, 2001

I find the vicious reaction to the concept of forgiveness amusing. Who said anything about McVeigh, BTW?

You kids.
posted by joeclark at 8:30 PM on June 12, 2001

don't be coy.
posted by christina at 9:10 PM on June 12, 2001

Would the kottke.org cheersquad just FUCK OFF? Thank you.
posted by Graham at 9:11 PM on June 12, 2001

Who's that, Graham?
posted by rodii at 10:12 PM on June 12, 2001

This prat...
posted by Graham at 6:40 AM on June 13, 2001

It's not hard getting forgiveness for killing people, if you do it with a car or truck instead of a gun or knife. A drunk driver killed my friend's sister, and crippled her--the judge decided the driver shouldn't go to jail because, except for killing one innocent and maiming another, he was a good person. (Before you flame me, I'm not anti-car: but I don't think the overwhelming majority of responsible drivers should forgive drunken killers, any more than I would defend a vicious killer because she happened to live in my neighborhood or had gone to my high school. You aren't like them. You aren't a murderer. They want you to forget that, because if you remember it, they'll have to take responsibility for their crimes.)

We (the US and Canada) don't generally let the victims of crime, or their relatives, decide on the penalty. Otherwise, people would go free after killing the childless and crotchety, and go to prison for life for stealing the wrong person's bicycle.

But even without the comment from the victims' families, and even if this were in the US, a death sentence would be very unlikely: that's reserved for deliberate murder, not criminally negligent stupidity.
posted by rosvicl at 1:02 PM on June 13, 2001