Coffee Shop

   I sat in a Timmie's the other day, had a double-double and engaged in a coffee shop chat with a friend. I can't even tell you how many times the two of us have done this and there are thousands of us across Canada who do this on a daily basis.
   Normally the conversations touch on the mundane--our plans for the weekend, the weather, how our days are shaping up, how our common acquaintances are getting along and the like.
   We don't normally get into deep, almost philosophical discussions about anything really, we kind of see our visits to Tim's as being kind of a break from all of that. The other day, though, was different.
   My friend had been listening to some of the details of an ongoing court case here in London, that of the alleged killer of Victoria (Tori) Stafford. For those of you who might not be from my part of Canada, Tori Stafford was a young girl from Woodstock who was abducted from her school as it let out, taken by car to the Guelph area, sexually assaulted in the back seat of the car and then murdered, with a claw hammer. The accused's girlfriend has already been tried and convicted of first-degree murder and has provided the description of how Tori's life ended. The people of London and the surrounding area have been assaulted themselves by the details of the case, which have been outlined daily in the papers. None of us have been spared the grisly details and I would guess that many of us have stopped reading, for our own reasons.

   My friend felt compelled to talk about this case today, as we sat there over our coffees.
   He is someone who angers easily when it comes to the victimization of anyone, particularly the young and defenseless and he felt compelled that day to offer his opinion as to how the perpetrators of this crime should be ultimately punished. Without a doubt, he thought, they should be executed.
   I'm sure many of us feel the same way, in our disgust and anger. It is almost impossible not to. These days, though, capital punishment is not an option, rightly or wrongly, and we are left with what seem like inappropriate options for dealing with these kinds of perpetrators. The fact that it will be our responsibility for likely many years to come to house, feed and protect her killers has riled my friend and many others. Our only option is to make sure that these people are never allowed to do the same thing to anyone else.
   Personally, I have always been against capital punishment. I understand the disgust, heartbreak and anger which some crimes cause. The contradiction that capital punishment presents to me is that on one hand we see murder as being the most  heinous of crimes. The measured response to murder that capital punishment suggests is to murder someone, yet again. If, in fact, murder is bad then we need to ensure that we do not engage in it.
   I presented this as a point of view to my friend and he admitted that he hadn't really looked at that way. But, indeed, if I were the family member of someone who'd been murdered then I'm not so sure I'd feel so merciful, either.
   At the end of our discussion, I suggested a totally different option. I suggested, in this particular case, simply letting the murderers go free! My friend looked at me in shock. I explained in the following manner.
   Envision a courtroom scene wherein Tori's killers have been convicted and are awaiting sentencing. As a sentence, the judge tells the two of them, in the midst of a room jam-packed with Tori's family, friends and well-wishers that they are free to go. And at that point, the judge, bailiffs and any attending police officers simply walk away.
   My friend understood what I was suggesting and smiled.
   I suppose this might be justice in the purest sense; the consequences you suffer are commensurate with the crime you commit.
   This, of course, will not happen, nor should it.

   This is more or less where our talk ended at Tim's that day. It wasn't what we usually end up chatting about. I will wager that at some point that day another couple or group of coffee-drinkers sat and talked about Tori and quite likely expressed the same outrage and bemoaned the whole justice system. I also imagine opinions were offered on why people like her killers even exist in this world, what can be done to identify them earlier and what can be done with them afterwards.
   As you might have noticed, I have not named either the current defendant or his accomplice. I did not choose to leave them nameless due to any regard for their anonymity. I believe that one of the rights you have as a human is the right to a name. I believe that when you begin to act in a sub-human way then you have given up the right to be referred to by name. At least, in this blog. So be it.

   Okay, I didn't intend to spend so much of this blog talking about Tori Stafford. I kind of meant to spend this time talking more about how coffee shops serve as community sounding boards and, more simply, as places of congregation. All that for another day, I guess. In the meantime, I have graced this page with pictures of Tori. It seems as though lately I've talked about nothing but death, dying and the afterlife. I really meant to do something different today but such was not the case, as it turns out. Her pictures have helped. They have helped by taking some of the ugliness away.