Who gets "justice," who gets "mercy"?

A comment left by Matthias on my last post, about the Mundelein seminarian who was given probation for killing two other seminarians while driving drunk, is worth bringing forward, though it's long, so I'll ask you to click the comment button on the previous post. The heart of his argument was that the judge, though inclined to give jail time, accepted the petitions for clemency offered by the mothers of the two victims, who had been in contact with Robert Spaulding over the past year. Clemency, then, wasn't the result of white or any other kind of privilege, but clearly an act of mercy granted by the judge on behalf of the two mothers.

Matthias' argument is both compelling and compassionate, and I don't do it justice. Please read it before continuing. I still have to ask, however, whether probation sufficiently acknowledges the social damage done by Spaulding reckless behavior. The victims of drunk driving are not just the ones in a single accident; consider, for example, that Mundelein's property sits across the street from Mount Carmel High School. What if the school had been having a function that evening? The common good demands a serious response to drunk driving, and I'm afraid many who have directly suffered its effects will see this as a slap on the wrist, even favoritism to would-be clergy.

Further, though, I don't doubt that similar pleas by mothers and even victims' families have echoed in the urban courtrooms of Chicago when the defendent is an African American male in the same circumstances. Yet over and over our "justice" system punishes black males far more harshly. As Catholics committed to both justice and mercy, I think we need to recognize an injustice, even when we may agree with a merciful result, as Matthias does. Would that our justice system would show such mercy when a black adolescent makes his first big mistake! But it generally doesn't. And I think we have to acknowledge that in this case, while at the same time we honor and applaud the two courageous women who showed mercy to the man who killed their sons.