Are some crimes (or sins) unredeemable?

Great Debates
1

This may not be easy to phrase, but it’s about whether all people deserve redemption or if some should never receive it.

Let’s take three completely unconnected events from the summer of 1969:

  1. Ted Kennedy drives off the bridge at Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne dies. The events are so well known I won’t rehash them other than to say the unarguable facts: that Ted’s actions that night were incomprehensible, suspicious, inexcusable, and according to medical and forensic experts his actions/inactions in the hours following the accident were as responsible for her death as the accident. I also dont’ think even his most ardent supporter would argue that had he been Ted the plumber instead of Ted the Senator/brother of two [arguably three] martyrs/only surviving son of one of the nation’s biggest zillionaire powerbrokers/possibly the most politically well connected man in the nation he would have gotten into incomparably deeper trouble for that and probably would have gone to prison.
    Instead he got a slap on the wrist from the court and continued to serve in the Senate for 40 years. He was one of the most powerful men in the nation and even his many political enemies had great respect for him.

  2. Leslie Van Houten was involved in the murders of Rosemary and Leno Labianca. Her guilt is beyond question; the best thing that can be said is that her multiple stabbing of Rosemary LaBianca was probably post-mortem. After the murders she wrote with their blood, ate a snack from the LaBianca’s refrigerator, took a shower in their bathroom. She was sentenced to death 38 years ago and if ever a case deserved the death penalty she and her confederates were among them, but she lived due to the death penalty moratorium.
    She is still imprisoned: along with Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel she is the senior female prisoner in the United States (though with an asterix: Van Houten was freed for a few months during the late 1970s due to a retrial [which was due to the probable murder of her original attorney]).
    She is technically eligible for parole and has hearings every few years but has always been denied. The crimes were so barbaric and so well known that 40 years hasn’t dimmed them. By all accounts she is a model prisoner who would probably be no danger if released and in fact when she was free 30 years ago her parole was completely uneventful.

  3. In summer 1969 Albert Speer released the first edition of his memoir Inside the Third Reich. Having begun as Hitler’s favorite architect (his first job was to build a balcony off the Chancellor’s office) he rose to occupy continually higher positions in the Nazi Party, finally serving as Armaments Minister from 1942-1945. He was highly efficient and ruthless; his massive defense and civil projects used millions of Jewish/Pole/Russian/POW other enslaved laborers, millions of whom died. Accused on all four counts of the Nuremberg Trials, of all the defendants he was the one who showed the most open remorse and made the least effort to exonerate himself, taking full responsibility for his actions; many of his co-defendents and some of his prosecutors felt this was an act in order to get clemency. While it is impossible to know whether they were right it is fact that he received 20 years imprisonment while men who worked under him and carried out Speer’s orders and programs received death by hanging.
    He served his 20 years at Spandau, was released quietly, went back to his family in Germany. He spoke frequently and openly and at great depth to interviewers and historians, including many Jewish Holocaust survivors. He published two memoirs, both of them them international bestsellers; Inside the Third Reich was one of the bestselling works of non-fiction in the 20th century, has been translated into dozens of languages, and continues to sell millions of copies every decade and will likely never go out of print. He used some of the massive royalties to build a chalet of his own design for himself and his family and he lived very comfortably, traveling the world and sometimes being paid a fortune for his speeches, all of which caused much criticism and hatred of him (that he profited off his association with Hitler). Many were surprised to learn, years after his death when it was revealed by his grandson, that though he did live quite comfortably Speer actually donated the majority (about 3/4) of his huge income to Israeli causes and Jewish charities and all with the express condition that they never reveal his name, for he felt he would be reviled as a hypocrite seeking publicity and good PR.
    ==============================================

I’ll end there for now but be back to begin the debate in just a moment.

2

So all three of the above were directly responsible for deaths.

Nobody really knows exactly what happened at Chappaquiddick- we have Ted’s version but its accuracy is up for debate. It’s possible he even deluded himself in some ways; he’d hardly be the first person to have altered his memories. We don’t know what happened, but- probably through a combination of negligence and panic- he caused the death of a woman, and through wealth and entitlement he got off more or less scot free. The only real career damage was he never became president; whether he would have without Chapaquiddick, who knows.
On the other hand, he was incredibly instrumental in the Democratic Party and in many liberal and many bipartisan movements. Even if you are a conservative and loathe him politically, nobody can argue his dedication to his causes.

Leslie Van Houten- what she did is well documented and she takes complete ownership. Even she says whether the wounds were post-mortem or not makes no difference; to millions of people (including me) she’s as guilty as if she’d personally murdered both Labiancas. What else can you say beyond “she’s one of the Manson murderers?”, for the crime’s so famous that it needs little further introduction and certainly no hyperbole or elaboration, though here’s a little bit of trivia I’ll add: she’s one of the few living humans who has a statue of themself in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors.
On the other hand, as horrible as the Labianca murders were, there have been worse. MANY MANY worse. While some of those who were responsible for such murders and who were caught have been executed (with which on a personal note I’ll add that I have no problem), others have been freed:

Loeb (of Leopold and infamy) was released after 33 years; lived an uneventful life in Puerto Rico afterwards. Caril Ann Fugate(girlfriend and accomplice of Charles Starkweather) was freed after 18 years, has been free for 33 years, worked as a janitor and lives in public housing but no problem/no record since parole. There are others, and most have no real incidents following parole.

Then there’s her former “kinfolk”: Linda Kasabian, the “good Manson” who was state’s evidence at the trial and never served prison time: her record in the last 40 years has been constant clashes with the law and arrests for drug possession and sales. Squeaky Fromme, unless she has changed radically in the past few years, never once expressed remorse for her attempt to kill Ford (neither did Sara Jane Moore- quite the opposite in fact, she told Matt Lauer in an interview after her release that she was glad she didn’t kill him but didn’t regret trying), she was not a model prisoner (she escaped, as did Moore), as of a few years ago she was still insanely devoted to Manson, and while I realize it can’t be considered at a parole hearing since she was never convicted of murder she was a suspect in several murders, and yet she’s been released.

Speer- his actions directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. His efficiency as Armaments Minister and in other capacities helped prolong a war in which tens of millions (including more innocent civilians than any other war in history) were killed. You could literally populate a large city with the number of people whose deaths were directly or indirectly tied to him. Is there any way anybody can ever be redeemed from such an act? And yet his actions after parole generated tens of millions of dollars to charities.
So short OP long, do you believe any of the above have been “redeemed”?

Which one do you believe is the most contemptible? What about the least?

Do you think that remorse is something that should be taken into consideration?
What is necessary for redemption?

Do you believe redemption is possible for them? For anybody guilty of another person’s death (other than through accident or ignorance)?

3

While I don’t wish to knock the post, the critical core of the qusetion lies not in the sin but in the forgiveness.

For most wordly people, there are things one can forgive and things one can’t, and that’s that. It varies by individual and culture.

For people who don’t believe in sin or morality, there is nothing to forgive, or for that matter, laud. Although, I should point out that as a practical matter they are not much different than the above.

For Christians and Jews and Buddhists (depends on the sect in all cases), there is nothing to big to be forgiven - that’s the entire point of forgiveness. Again, as a practical matter, people are often not too different from the worldly. Forgiveness is a hugely hard virtue.

4

Yes. If the evidence is strong that you did something very wrong but you are unwilling either to admit it or to confront that evidence, then many of your fellow humans will always regard you as unredeemed.

“Coming clean” about what happened - hiding nothing - is big. This was Ted Kennedy’s problem - what he did was possibly forgivable, but he never was seen as dealing honestly with it.

5

I like what the Talmud says on this issue (partially on this issue, anyway). Interesting question, Sampiro. It’s one of the things I think about a lot in this ‘season of forgiveness’ of the high Holidays.

Tractate, Sanhedrin 37a

“FOR THIS REASON WAS MAN CREATED ALONE, TO TEACH THEE THAT WHOSOEVER DESTROYS A SINGLE SOUL… SCRIPTURE IMPUTES [GUILT] TO HIM AS THOUGH HE HAD DESTROYED A COMPLETE WORLD; AND WHOSOEVER PRESERVES A SINGLE SOUL…, SCRIPTURE ASCRIBES [MERIT] TO HIM AS THOUGH HE HAD PRESERVED A COMPLETE WORLD.”

I take this to mean not that good actions ‘cancel’ bad ones. The action of preserving a life is the preservation of the future, and of infinite possibility, for the saved person and his potential descendents. The destruction of a life, any life, is the inverse, an end of infinite possibilities. Thus it is not the scale of the crime or sin (of murder) which is important, as on some level one murder is as bad as millions. This helps me to counteract the ‘one=tragedy, million=statistic’ way of thinking.

It is not possible to ‘redeem’ a crime that takes a life. But responding to it by choosing to (attempting to) preserve lives is to me, the best and only proportionate response.

I hope that makes some sense…

6

For me, one of the biggest appeals of forgiveness (forgiveness of self, forgiveness of others, being forgiven by others) is that it can prevent future harm.

Remorse is a precursor of forgiveness in the sense that it requires you to be aware that you’ve hurt someone by your actions and understand why it was wrong, and so is some kind of constructive retribution (community service or whatever you want to call it, similar to what Speer did with donations to charity) as well as a penalty for what you did.

Charlie Manson (I don’t know tons about him) may be a sociopath and beyond forgiveness. But I know his youth was full of abuse and trauma. Perhaps if he had had the environment to give or receive forgiveness as a youth, he never would’ve become a cult leader and there wouldn’t have been the murders. But that is pure speculation, and I’m sure I’ll get tons of attacks for saying that. However if you take 2 people who have had traumatic lives or childhods and offer one assistance, understanding, help them empathize with their victims and their own traumas and forgiveness and offer the other abuse, harassment, disdain and hatred, the first one will generally grow up to become far less of a threat to others than the second.

With Nazism, much of that seems to have been motivated by a sense of injustice which the people who voted for the nazis perceived to be caused by domestic and international threats to their way of life (communists, jews, liberals, bankers, etc). Again, it sounds lame but you do have to wonder how many of the Germans who voted the Nazis into power in 1933 would’ve done so had they been more capable of empathy or forgiveness instead of being motivated by a hatred of domestic and foreign interlopers. Even in the best years of the Nazi party, they only got 44% of the vote. Before that they were a fringe party.

So from my perspective, issues like forgiveness and empathy are important after crimes are committed, but they could play a role, in some situations, in stopping the crimes before they happened.

As far as what is forgivable and what isn’t, I guess it depends. Sociopaths will never be capable of it. And some crimes are on such a large scale that you really can’t apologize and expect it to go away.

I think Van Houten has. As far as Kennedy, he supposedly spent his life motivated by the guilt he felt. But he still used his political connections to avoid any consequence to his actions. So I don’t think he has been fully redeemed. I think what Speer did was on such a large scale that there is no way an individual can fully redeem themselves. I’d say Van Houten is the only one I’d consider redeemed.

Van Houten is the least. She has shown remorse and tried to be constructive, taken responsibility, been punished. Kennedy showed remorse and tried to be constructive (as I said, I have heard he spent a good amount of time trying to promote egalitarian political views because of the guilt that wracked him) but avoided punishment and responsibility.

Speer showed remorse, took responsibility, tried to be constructive and was punished. But his acts were on such a large scale that I don’t think he can ever truly be forgiven.

Remorse is mandatory. It requires you to give your victim enough empathy and worth that you understand they have feeling, rights and boundaries and deserve to have those feelings, rights and boundaries respected, and then to understand how you violated those things.

Redemption requires remorse (empathy and understanding of your victim’s perspective and rights), responsibility (aka understanding your role and accepting consequences), a penalty and being a constructive influence to make amends.

Mostly, yes but not totally. Of course that is easy to say on a message board. If someone kills someone I love then I will have to get back to you.

But then again, issues beyond personal control play a role. The monoamine oxidise enzyme. Supposedly males who have genetics that code for a deficient MAOA enzyme, when exposed to abuse in childhood, grow up to have poor impulse control.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web2/apatel.html

Nutrition can also play a role in antisocial behavior.

http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2003/10/15/crime_and_nutrition.htm

If the purpose of remorse and forgiveness is to deal with conscious control (assuming free will even exists), how do you account for variables such as nutrition or genetics which the individual may not be aware of or in control of?

7

This is my biggest argument for why I think Van Houten should be released. She has been a model prisoner for 40 years; not to release her sends the message to other inmates “There’s no point in cooperating, you’re going to die in prison, abandon all hope ye who enter here”.

There’s also the element of forgiveness for the sake of the forgiver. I can understand why Sharon Tate’s sister is at all the parole hearings (well, at least of those who killed her sister, to be honest I don’t understand her interest in Van Houten’s as much- LVH wasn’t present at the Tate/Sebring/Frykowski/Folger/Parent murders unless perhaps it’s to counterbalance the Labianca daughter who has said that they should be released). I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to lose a loved one to such a senseless and violent act and I’m not at all trying to minimize her suffering and her family’s and I know it’s 100% genuine. On the other had there’s a major part of me that says to Sharon’s sister “Debra, let it go”. I know it has to be easier said than done, but- Sharon’s dead, it was horrible, it was also 40 years ago, most of the people now on the planet were not even born, let go of your hate (she says she has none but that I don’t believe) and get on with your own life. Move far away from California if you need to, but find a life that’s not spent as a priestess to your sister. You’re almost sixty, you don’t have that many years left, go enjoy them, go help other victims, whatever, but currently the Manson family- the faded shadows of a bunch of drugged up horrible kids- are weighing you down. Walk away.

Something I posted on another blog that I’ll add here for any relevance it may have on what I think will be necessary for Van Houten’s parole:
There’s a video of the dying Atkins being denied parole here. (Warning: Disturbing if you find terminally ill people disturbing.)

I think that if Leslie Van Houten (generally considered the most likely to one day be free) has any chances of ever being paroled then she should hope that Atkins doesn’t because I think there’s a psychic social need for Atkins to die in prison. I’m certainly not accusing or joining in with the ridiculous “American revenge culture” rhetoric you see on some sites- frankly I think the bitch should have died by gas in the 1970s; she’s one of those (thankfully very few) people of whom it can be said unarguably “the world would have been a better place if she’d never been born”. However, since she didn’t get executed I think that death in prison is the next most acceptable thing. Nothing will undo her deeds, but dying in agony in prison, separated from anyone who might still give a damn (such as her husband [the second she’s married since being incarcerated]), is the closest possible way anything like closure can be had; someone has to pay the ultimate price for this crime, and since they can’t be executed (and why bother at this late date) dying in prison is the ultimate price.

Perhaps it’s even a better price ultimately. Had she been taken to the gas chamber when she was still young and vital and even good looking by some standards she’d have likely been some sort of counter culture martyr. Instead she goes to Whatever Happens Next- after one hell of a fight- a pathetic gasping amputee with bruises and collapsed veins from IVs and connected to oxygen. Having prevented Sharon Tate from having the joys of motherhood and continued life Atkins now takes on like the ancient scapegoat all the infirmities of age that, also due to Atkins’ savagery, Sharon never had to endure, and it restores just a minute amount of balance. The gods demand a decayed old crone. Sharon will always be young and beautiful, while nobody venerates pathetic an unloved gasping elderly amputee old crones, so perhaps it’s a good thing. Certainly it might as well be.

Once she is (finally) dead (damn, but she has a will to live- she must believe in an afterlife that she wants to avoid), and then when Charlie is dead (again: a chain-smoking drug abusing hillbilly who’s survived 3rd degree burns and yet he makes it into his 70s while so many healthy living productive people die young) I don’t think anybody will much care if Van Houten and Krenwinkel are released. (Tex never needs to take a free breath but he’ll be a forgotten old man in a prison.) But those two deaths in prison are needed. I think much of the almost obscene fascination with this case (and again I’m not pointing fingers, I’m fascinated by it too) is because all of the murderers are, against all logic and odds and common decency, still alive. Cults need something alive or some kind of relic; now that Cielo Drive is gone and once they finally begin dropping it’ll become another Black Dahlia or Leopold & Loeb or Ted Bundy type case that’s remembered by true crime buffs and forgotten by most others.

And then we can all concentrate on WEST MEMPHIS THREE instead. (It’s actually a far more interesting case if only because it’s ongoing.)

8

Don’t these cases and their variety just demonstrate that trying to formulate a single “forgiveness rule” is futile?

9

It’s all a matter of relative definitions perhaps, but personally I find “forgiveness” something that can only be granted to the perpetrators and by the victim or perhaps their loved ones. (This is one reason that I am against formal apologies for slavery or Jim Crow or most other atrocities and crimes against humanity; George Wallace asking for forgiveness for his personal actions was one thing, but the representatives of the United States or a particular state it’s another altogether since a state is not a human and humans made the policy, if that makes sense; same with the Pope apologizing to Galileo- if it was the same Pope and Galileo were still alive it’s one thing, but both turned to dust centuries ago.)

Hence the word redeemed, as in “redeemed in the eyes of the state”. In the case of Leslie Van Houten, most Californians never met the victims of the Manson murderers and were not personally endangered or harmed by the killings, but socially there were many valid reasons for punishing the murderers: a warning to others, to prevent them from killing or harming again, to maintain order, etc… When Leslie Van Houten is no longer considered a threat should the state release her? Or for Ted Kennedy, who never went to prison, is there a point (well, now that he’s dead of course, but before) when it should be a reasonable conclusion that “he’s paid his dues” (and to those who say in his case the answer is “No”, I’m frankly inclined to agree since he never really took ownership).

Speer- many of his victims were still alive at the time of his death (those enslaved or the loved ones of those enslaved)- his guilt is unique of the above. I will only say that short of becoming a monk and living in poverty while serving the poor and giving not most but all of his earnings to charities would it have redeemed him more? OTOH, had he spent his royalties (conservatively tens of millions in 2009 USD) on lavish living and trust funds for his kids with little or nothing to charity, would he have been redeemed less in your eyes? To me the answer to most is definitely yes.

I have no answers though, so I’m curious what others think.

10

I strongly agree.

11

Plenty of crimes are irredeemable. Pretty much all crimes that cause death or permanent harm, or long term harm, or harm to many people. And it need not be physical. The Enron and bond rating scams were all irredeemable offenses.

12

Are you looking at this from a religious/spiritial point of view?

If so…IMHO:

[Past life Catholic upbringing]

Kennedy - assuming he is responsible for her death is not redeemed. He did not come clean about what happened. No matter how grieved he was about his role, he did not come clean. From a Catholic (at least my viewpoint from growing up Catholic - I am lapsed now and borderline athiest) viewpoint, his soul is in huge jeapordy of being damned.

Leslie? She has not had the opportunity to show her remorse if she had any since she was in prison. Just being a model prisoner does not redeem her. Her soul is in danger.

Speer? It sure sounds like his remorse was true. He did so much evil that the rest of his life should be tortured by what he did. It sounds like he was. If he ever stopped torturing himself when he was alive then he would be damned. His crimes were so bad there really is no way for him to make restitiution during his life. He did give up most of his wealth to Jewish causes…but still lived well. He should have lived in a cardboard box by a sewage pond and given up nearly all his money…so I don’t know. Maybe damned, maybe a very long, painful time in Purgatory.

[/Past life Catholic upbringing]

13

Only the victim can make a decision about absolving the perpetrator of a crime against the innocent.

To the extent that these crimes are crimes against society in general, society can punish them and choose to allow for redemption by society, or not. But the voice of the victim is the final arbiter for crimes against that particular innocent life, and that voice is silent. For that reason, any decision by society which pretends to be a proxy for the dead is hollow.

Should society allow forgiveness on behalf of society? I think so. I do think forgiveness and recognition of “redemption” does not confer release from punishment, and I see no contradiction in a forgiven and redeemed criminal nevertheless being executed or imprisoned without parole. I believe there have been instances of criminals who thought the same thing. In those sorts of cases it might be said that there was no “redemption” if by “redemption” you mean release from a societal requirement to pay a particular penalty.

In my opinion there are crimes for which a sentence should be fully executed despite post-event remorse and efforts on the part of the criminal to repay a debt to society. In the case of murder, no compensatory effort will suffice.

As an aside, I am not clear why Ted Kennedy would be considered here…whatever his failings, Ms Kopechne’s death was clearly an accident.

14

The larger question is one I’ve thought about it.

Hawthorne addressed it in his story “The Unforgivable Sin” or something like that, wherein a man seeks to commit a sin so terrible that it is unforgivable. We don’t learn what the sin is but the man kills himself sometime later by climbing into a furnace. All that is left of him are his bones and his hardened stony heart.

To me, the implication is that the unforgivable sin is hardening your heart. From experience, I believe that the worst thing one human being can do is to turn their back on love.

15

The subtext implied he masturbated while watching snails have sex.

16

One of the few “good ol’ boy” Southern politician quotes that I ever thought was LOL hysterical was delivered by somebody whose name I don’t remember and I’ve never been able to find it, though I do remember seeing it. He was a pro death penalty politician with the old man Foghorn Leghorn voice and Sirhan Sirhan was coming up for a parole hearing at the time. Foghorn mentioned that if he’d been in power Sirhan wouldn’t be up for parole because he’d have killed him for the assassination. When another guest mentioned that RFK would most likely have not only opposed the death penalty but likely petitioned for Sirhan’s release if he was judged reformed and sane et al, Foghorn said something to the effect of 'Well ain’t that the worst kinda luck in the world? The only powerful man who’d have championed his probation is the only man he kilt".

17

I can’t find the source atm, but there’s a researcher delving into “evil.”

If we were to classify different types of crimes on a scale of “more evil” or “less evil,” a typical scale would look like this (1 being less evil than 5):

  1. Crime of passion
  2. Accidental murder
  3. Premeditated murder
  4. Murder involving sexual deviance
  5. A period of torture followed by murder
  6. Repeated episodes of #5 or #4, e.g. a serial killer.

Imho, redemption has nothing to do with this scale. No matter how sorry the criminal is, some crimes are just so supremely evil that they should pay for it regardless of their later actions.

Forgiveness, imho, has nothing to do with criminality, and when a person decides to commit a crime, ignorance is not an excuse.