Andy looked across the table at Michael McBride, who took a sip of espresso. They had already ordered their food, and were waiting for it to be delivered to the table. Andy reached up to their order number and rearranged it in the metal stand.
There was almost nothing to say. There was almost too much to say.
After one man’s son killed the other’s daughter, it would have been easy for the men to hash it out, over and over, examining every detail for missed clues. It would have been natural for accusations to fly, for excuses to be made, for anger to be shown. But even though there was a lot that could have been said, sometimes it was hard to say anything at all. Their conversations were heartfelt and personal. It was hard for anyone to believe that the two met every Friday for lunch, but this unusual pair shared a common, tragic bond: both had lost a child in a very significant, dramatic way. Andy had lost Ann to death. Forever. Michael had lost Conor to prison, possibly for life.
“So, I’ve been reading about this concept called restorative justice,” Andy said as he poured sweetener into his iced tea and swirled his spoon around in his glass.
“What is that?” Michael asked, his eyebrow raised in a parenthesis of curiosity. “Julie hasn’t been sleeping because she can’t stand the thought of Conor spending his entire life in jail. She tosses all night.”
Andy explained restorative justice in as much detail as he knew. “The good thing about it is that Kate and I would have a say in the length of Conor’s sentence. The ‘restorative justice circle’ allows everyone to come to an agreement on what the sentence should be.”
“Do you think it could work for Conor?” Michael asked. At this, the waitress appeared with their food and left it at the table.
“I’m not sure. In order to start the process, we need a restorative justice facilitator, and I’m not sure where to start looking,” Andy said, pulling his food to him and picking up his sandwich. “There’s nothing like it here in Leon County. Then we will have to convince Jack Campbell to agree to it.”
“What if it wasn’t just us asking?” Michael said. “What if we got a petition and circulated it among our friends?”
Andy thought about this idea. “It definitely couldn’t hurt,” he said before biting into his meal.
Later, Michael told his wife about all he and Andy had discussed. Without hesitation, Julie latched onto the concept like a drowning person to a life preserver. With the help of Julie, Andy began trying to figure out if restorative justice could be implemented in Conor’s case. They joined chat groups and forums. They called and e-mailed restorative justice experts, most of whom never bothered to respond. The two or three who did bother all had bad news.
“Sorry, but there’s no one in the state of Florida who can do this for you,” one e-mail read.
Andy actually talked to one of the most prominent restorative justice experts in the country who echoed the sentiment. “I can’t help you with this.” No reason was given.
After months of effort, Andy got a call from Julie.
“I found someone,” she said. “Her name is Sujatha Baliga and she works in Oakland, California. She gave me her phone number and wants to talk to you and Kate.”
What Julie didn’t tell us was that she had found Sujatha by way of Howard Zehr, “the grandfather of restorative justice” and author of the book Andy read aloud to me in the laundry room. Basically, she decided she would not give up until she talked to him. “Hi, my name is Julie McBride. My son shot and killed his fiancée, and her parents are interested in doing restorative justice,” she said when she got him on the telephone.
“Mm-hmm,” he said. “You don’t need just a restorative justice practitioner. You need a restorative justice lawyer. Let me make some calls.”
Howard called Sujatha, who worked for the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, California. She had been working in Alameda County to establish a restorative justice youth program in the juvenile justice system there. When she got a call from Howard, she immediately rejected the idea.
“No way, Howard,” she said. “You were talking to the mother of the young man who committed this crime. Of course she wants to pursue this.”
“I know you believe restorative justice could apply in cases like this.”
“Of course I do. But how could we pull it off in a capital case in Florida?” Sujatha asked. “No chance, Howard.”
Howard, who is a laid-back, peaceful Mennonite, finally agreed. “Okay, but you talk to her and tell her why it’s not going to work. She needs a lawyer’s perspective—someone who understands how restorative justice works within the legal system.”
“Go ahead and give her my number. But I don’t have anything good to tell her. What I do here with kids in California is never going to happen in a capital case in a Southern state.”
Within the hour Sujatha received a call from Julie, whom she found to be warm, grateful, and serious about helping her son. Through her tears, Julie described what happened that horrible Sunday: how Conor planned to take his own life, but took Ann’s instead, how he turned himself in, how he confessed. “Everyone wants to use restorative justice in this case,” she concluded.
“I’m sorry, but this is a capital crime in Florida,” Sujatha said. “Even if the parents of the victim wanted to pursue restorative justice, it takes eighteen months to get a process like this started.”
“Actually, the Grosmaires introduced us to the concept,” Julie said.
“Wait, the parents of the victim?” Sujatha asked.
“Yes! They’re the ones who told us about restorative justice.”
“You’re in contact with them?”
“Frequently,” she said. “In fact, they regularly visit Conor in jail, and my husband meets with Ann’s dad every week. I just went to breakfast with them on Saturday.”
Sujatha paused on the other end of the line. “I have to say, it sounds like a remarkable situation. But I’m just not sure what we can do in a first-degree homicide case at this stage of the game.”
Julie began to cry. “Won’t you let me just hire you to see what you can do?”
“In Oakland I facilitate restorative practices to keep children out of the juvenile justice system,” Sujatha said, very kindly. “You know, for crimes like burglary and robbery, or teen-dating violence.” She explained how she gathered families, victims, law enforcement, the state attorney, and community members for in-person meetings with the juvenile who committed the crime. Then they agree on a plan for how to deal with the offense in a way that benefits all involved. “But I’ve never used restorative justice for a homicide case with gun charges,” she said. “Especially not for first-degree murder.”
“I know you can’t promise anything,” Julie said, sniffling. She’d been trying for months to get a response from a restorative justice expert, and she felt her chance was slipping through her hands. “But please just talk with the Grosmaires.”
“Even if the parents are on board, it took me years to build trust with the district attorney here. I can’t imagine it working in a homicide case in the Florida panhandle. I can’t work for you—in good conscience—because I don’t think it will work.”
“But you’ll talk to them?”
Sujatha paused, trying to figure out how far this should go. She knew this wouldn’t work, but she didn’t want to dash the hopes of this desperate mother.
“Sure,” she said, though she figured this would be the end of it. She assumed Julie was just another worried, unrealistic mother valiantly doing whatever she could to help her son. “You can give them my contact information. If they want to call me, they can.”
My cell phone buzzed on my desk, so I flipped it over and saw Andy’s name pop up on the screen.
“Julie called and gave me the number of a lawyer in California who specializes in restorative justice,” Andy said. “Do you want to call her?”
“Sure!” I said. Using the conference call feature on our iPhones, we dialed her number and were connected immediately.
“Sujatha Baliga?” I asked. “Julie McBride gave us your number. Do you have time to talk?”
“Of course,” she said.
Andy and I explained our situation. We told her about Ann and Conor’s tumultuous relationship, how their tragic fight ended in death, how Conor turned himself in, how his dad showed up at the hospital, how we forgave Conor, and how I visited him in jail that Friday to tell him. Then I explained Allison’s suggestion that we pursue restorative justice.
“God forgives us,” Andy said, “so we forgave Conor.”
For a moment no one spoke. Sujatha cleared her throat, pushing away the emotion that I thought I’d detected in her voice.
“Have you met with the state attorney?” she asked.
“Yes, and the death penalty is already off the table,” I said. “Andy and I don’t want Conor to spend the rest of his life behind bars. What is the point of an able-bodied young man sitting in a cell every day for thirty years? Wouldn’t it be better if he could spend half of his sentence in prison, but the other half working to repair the harm he’s done? We know he can’t give us back Ann’s life—that is a debt he can never repay. But he can take his life and dedicate it to the things that she would have done—things like animal rescue. Wouldn’t community service be better than just being locked away? If the case doesn’t go to trial, then maybe we can make a difference in the sentence that Conor receives.” I paused.
“Can you help us use the restorative justice process to handle his case?” I asked.
“It’ll be an uphill battle,” she said. “Restorative justice dialogues in serious cases like this happen, but only after the person who caused the harm is already into a long prison sentence, often just before he is released. The model I work with, restorative justice diversion, works because we have an arrangement with the district attorney. Here in Alameda County it’s for young people who have committed crimes. The DA’s office will refer cases to us that they think will work well. When the participants in the circle, including the youth, come to an agreement on what the outcome should be, the district attorney never charges the youth with the crime. There’s no similar process in your jurisdiction, and even if there were, this case is too serious for the DA to agree to use it.”
“Part of the reason we want to do this is to have a say in Conor’s sentence. But I want answers,” Andy said. “We can’t get answers in the traditional criminal justice system. What were Ann’s last words? What kind of argument could’ve possibly caused this?”
“I’ve worked with incarcerated people to prepare them for Victim Offender Dialogues,” Sujatha said. “From the time they commit their offense, they are coached to say nothing, deny everything. People serving time often don’t even speak to their cellmates about what they are in for and have espoused their innocence for so long that we have to spend a lot of time with them just to get them to admit what they did. Silence is conditioned into them.”
“We know what we want to do has never been done before, but we also know that this is what God wants us to do. It’s about us, but it’s also about showing others that there is another way,” I said.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “Let’s see what we can do then.”
When she ended the phone call, I realized I’d been holding my breath when I wasn’t talking. We didn’t know that Sujatha had intended to break it to us gently that it was never going to work. Later she admitted that something in our voices made it impossible for her to say “no chance” as easily as she’d said it to Howard Zehr.
“I don’t think she’s ever met anybody like us,” Andy said.
Sujatha’s first call was to Conor’s defense attorney, Greg Cummings. After she talked to him, she immediately called us. “Okay, I have some news, but it’s sort of delicate.” Every time she called about something she thought would be upsetting, she spoke with great sensitivity. “In order for me to have access to all the evidence and all the materials, I’m technically going to have to be part of the defense team. I wouldn’t be a traditional member of the defense team,” she said. “I’d really occupy a space somewhere in the middle—including both Conor’s interests and Ann’s—so I can help everyone. They’ll bring me on as an expert in restorative justice, but if that bothers you guys at all, then I won’t do it.”
“No, that’s great news, right?” I asked.
“I just wanted you to know it doesn’t mean I’m Conor’s defense lawyer. I’m not going to defend him in any way. I’m only doing this so I can have access to information and preserve the confidentiality of the process.”
“That’s fine,” Andy said. “We get that.” And it was true. We completely trusted Sujatha, this person whom we’d never met, this attorney from the other side of the country who reluctantly got involved in our case against her better judgment.
What could go wrong?
“Do you want to publicize it in the newspaper?” my handbell director asked me a few days before the memorial concert. It was a disconcerting question. On November 14 Good Shepherd planned to hold “Joy of My Heart: A Musical Memorial” at the church. This concert had begun as a way to publicly perform the handbell song written to honor Ann, but it had grown when the Men’s Choir and the Youth Chorale also decided to honor her. Three of the children in the choir even planned on playing instruments—a cello and two violins.
Because the Tallahassee Democrat has a religious section on Saturdays, my director wondered if we should allow them to do a story on it to raise community awareness. I wasn’t so sure. We’d avoided all media up until this point because I always figured they would misquote us—an inevitability I just didn’t need. I wasn’t sure if more publicity for the concert was worth the probable interview request. And so, in the end, we publicized the concert and gave the reporter a copy of our talk to use for quotations.
When the night finally arrived, the sanctuary began to fill. Once again I was deeply touched by my church family’s commitment to remembering Ann and loving us so well. In the foyer Michael and Julie McBride had set up a little table that had a stack of petitions that simply stated: “I agree with the Grosmaires in their pursuit of restorative justice in the case against Conor McBride.”
As concertgoers came into the church, the McBrides asked them to sign this petition, which we planned to give to Jack Campbell eventually. So far they had experienced great success in getting the communities of faith to support the petition efforts. When Michael asked the pastor of First Baptist if his church would announce and support the petition, his immediate response was, “Absolutely.” The people at Good Shepherd gathered around the table and formed a line to wait on the opportunity to sign the piece of paper.
This touched the McBrides, who were having trouble finding peace. Michael said he couldn’t help but think distressing thoughts. He’d ask himself, Where did I fail as a father? Why did I lose my faith? What could I have done to prevent this? Why did I not see it coming? Why did I own a gun? Though the community gathered around him and Andy met with him regularly, Michael began to realize he needed something more.
After taking the petition to various churches—and parking lots—Julie took one to work. There, her coworkers happily signed—including the daughter of State Attorney Willie Meggs, who would later have to authorize Conor’s sentence. Even though restorative justice might be unusual for our area of the country, we could at least show him that the community supported it.
It was poignant to be able to perform the handbell song dedicated to Ann, and when the children sang a song it split me wide open. It was called “Take These Wings,” and was about someone finding a dying bird on the ground. The bird gently encourages the person who found her to learn to fly, see, and sing—to really enjoy life while we have it. I’m not sure why it touched me so deeply, but something about the innocence of the children singing it combined with Ann’s love of birds struck me in just the right way.
At the end of the concert, we were given some time to thank everyone. “I can’t tell you how much it means to us to see so many of you coming out to honor our daughter,” I said, before Andy told the story of Ann asking him from her hospital bed to forgive Conor.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” he said. “But we have forgiven Conor, and we would love to pursue restorative justice for him.”
“Some of you may have noticed the petitions in the foyer,” I said. “Please take a moment and sign them on your way out.” Afterward, I noticed the line of people waiting to sign the petition snaked through the foyer.
In the spring of 2011, we went to Allison DeFoor’s downtown office for a meeting with Allison, Julie and Michael McBride, and Greg Cummings. Andy (who was in Fort Lauderdale) and Sujatha (who was in Oakland) participated in a conference call. It was close to a year after Ann had died.
“So, how are we going to do this?” Allison began. “How are we going to have a restorative justice process in a state that doesn’t have a restorative justice process, in a county that doesn’t have a state attorney set up to deal with this? How are we going to present this to the state attorney’s office in a way that will make them buy into it even though they’ve never done it before?”
The three lawyers—Allison, Greg, and Sujatha—didn’t speak for a few moments as they pondered what seemed to be an impossible situation. We needed a place where all of us could be together in the same place, but where the conversation would be considered “privileged.”
“I’ve never practiced law in Florida,” Sujatha began. “So why don’t you guys begin by telling me about the Florida process? I’m just not that familiar with it.”
Greg and Allison discussed the normal steps of the criminal justice system. Suddenly Allison smacked the table and exclaimed, “The pre-plea conference!”
“Right,” Greg said. “That should work.”
“Explain to me exactly how it works,” Sujatha said.
“It’s different in every state,” said Allison, “but in the state of Florida, the state attorney and the defense attorney get together for a meeting called the pre-plea conference. Anybody can attend, but usually just the two attorneys meet to go through all the files. Conor could technically go, and everything he says would be confidential.”
“Right,” Greg added. “It’s privileged, which means if Conor were to say, ‘I robbed a bank that day too,’ they couldn’t charge him with robbing a bank. He could be free to say whatever he wanted without it affecting his case.”
“And we would be there too?” Andy asked. Even though his voice came through the speaker sounding tinny, I could tell it was full of hope.
“Yes,” Allison said. “Anybody can be at a pre-plea conference. That’s the beauty of it.”
Allison was—as Deacon Marcus had promised—a unique, unforgettable man. Andy and I have compared him to a grenade rolling into a room. Here’s the idea—boom—here’s the solution.
“I have to admit,” Sujatha said, “it sounds like it would really work.” Traditionally, no one but the defense attorney and the prosecutor would attend this meeting . . . not even the defendant. Since nothing from the meeting is admissible at trial, it was the perfect solution. We decided that Conor, the McBrides, the two attorneys, Andy, and I would attend the meeting. We talked about having a community representative. We made a note to contact the local domestic violence support group to see if it were possible to have someone from that community represented. Given our short time frame, Sujatha had concerns about how it would work to include them. In established restorative justice practices, the community representatives are trained and understand and support restorative justice. It might be difficult, if not impossible, to find someone willing to participate on such short notice.
“The next step,” Sujatha said, “is for the Grosmaires to write Jack Campbell a letter asking him for this restorative justice process.”
“We started a petition, actually,” I said. “We have more than a thousand signatures from people in the community who were willing to say, ‘I agree with the Grosmaires in their pursuit of restorative justice in the case against Conor McBride.’ ”
“Where’d you get them?”
“At a concert, around the community, in our neighborhood,” Andy said. “We’ve been collecting them for months.” In fact, the McBrides had done an amazing job reaching the community with our message of restorative justice. Once, when they were doing a petition drive in a parking lot, we met some Quakers who were very supportive of our effort.
“Definitely include those,” Sujatha said.
“Any advice on what to say to Jack?” I asked. I realized that he was the last barrier in getting Conor’s case processed this way.
“Mention that the conversation needs to be privileged, so he’ll understand why we want to talk at the pre-plea conference,” Greg said.
“But you don’t want it to sound too lawyerly,” Allison said. “He’ll see through it and know we’re helping you write it.”
We talked for a while, framing out the contents of the letter. After we settled on language, Sujatha paused.
“Now it’s up to you,” she said. “You have to convince Jack Campbell to give this a chance.”