Two verdicts provide relief but not closure for families of school shooting victims
Plaintiff William Sherlach, left, hugs attorney Josh Koskoff while plaintiff Nicole Hockley hugs attorney Chris Mattei after the jury verdict and reading of monetary damages in the Alex Jones defamation trial in Waterbury, Connecticut, Wednesday. Credit: AP/Brian A. Pounds
Juries in two trials, one day and 1,140 miles apart, delivered decisions last week anxiously awaited by people who had been unimaginably and grievously harmed.
There are many ways to describe what was being sought.
Resolution. Retribution. Closure. Accountability. Justice.
And what those people discovered last week — what many of them likely already knew — is that such goals are elusive. A decision at trial, as decisive as it might seem, is only one step on a road that never really ends.
The first decision came Wednesday, when a Connecticut jury decided that conspiracy theory mongerer Alex Jones would have to pay nearly $1 billion in damages to the families of eight victims of the awful Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown in 2012. The parents involved said the trial was a quest for accountability.
Now comes the difficult task of collecting.
“We are going to chase Alex Jones to the ends of the earth” for “every last dollar,” Josh Koskoff, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, told The New York Times.
Jones, through his radio shows and InfoWars website, spread lies about the families and the grotesque massacre for years which led some followers to harass the families, sometimes even with death threats. But how do you succeed in taking your measure of an unrepentant man who flew by private jet with his entourage to the trial in Waterbury, where his accommodations reportedly were a rented villa that has a tennis court and swimming pool? How do you derive satisfaction from a penalty, however severe, levied against a man who seems not to have changed his MO a whit?
Those parents know all too well that the money by which they seek to hold Jones accountable will never fill the void left by the death of a first-grader, or other loved one.
The second decision came Thursday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where a jury decided that Nikolas Cruz, now 24, should spend the rest of his life in prison with no hope of parole for gunning down 17 people and wounding 17 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018.
Some, probably most, of the families in the courtroom were hoping for the death penalty. No mercy was shown to their loved ones, so no mercy should be granted to Cruz, they believed. So there was outrage and bewilderment afterward. Some became visibly angry, some shook their heads, and some slumped, eyes closed, filled with emotions most of us can only guess at.
Both trials mark the end of something and the beginning of something else, but what? Some things are just too ghastly for resolution.
Many of us navigate these emotions in our own lives, far less visibly. It’s human nature to want somebody to pay for the wrong they do us or our loved ones, whether it’s a swindle or an auto accident or a physical altercation or a death. And it is satisfying on a certain level when “justice” is served.
But even justice delivered swiftly in what we deem appropriate measure does not eliminate the pain of the loss. It dulls it, at best. It’s a fleeting satisfaction, at most. It’s helpful, for perseverance. But it’s not resolution.
I’m not sure there ever is closure for the loss of a loved one, unexpected or not, violent or not, at a young age or not, but especially when it is unexpected and violent and at a young age.
We all have holes in our hearts that we try to fill. Judicial penalties can be necessary parts of healing, but the real work is done with memories, love of others, and the richness life offers going forward.
It’s difficult stuff, and we do our best, but it never really ends.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
