{"id":1949,"date":"2003-11-15T03:31:48","date_gmt":"2003-11-15T19:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/11\/15\/justice-isnt-always-black-and-white\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T10:42:27","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T18:42:27","slug":"justice-isnt-always-black-and-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/11\/15\/justice-isnt-always-black-and-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice isn&#039;t always black and white"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:12824,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.thestranger.com\\\/2003-11-13\\\/feature2.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20050305160237\\\/http:\\\/\\\/thestranger.com:80\\\/2003-11-13\\\/feature2.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 03:03:39&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 03:03:39&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:12825,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/2hrlunch.typepad.com\\\/bloggo\\\/2003\\\/11\\\/comics_as_journ.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestranger.com\/2003-11-13\/feature2.html\" title=\"True Crime\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2003\/11\/graphics\/ridgeway.jpg\" width=\"326\" height=\"143\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Local weekly newspaper The Stranger has an excellent summary of Gary Ridgeway&#8217;s day in court confessing to 48 counts of murder as the Green River Killer &#8212; and plea bargaining to avoid the death sentence in the process &#8212; in the form of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestranger.com\/2003-11-13\/feature2.html\" title=\"True Crime\">24-panel black and white comic strip<\/a>. Very nicely done.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m really torn as to the matter of his plea bargain. Firstly, I&#8217;ve never been a huge fan of the death penalty (yes, I&#8217;m afraid I&#8217;m one of <em>those<\/em> flaming liberals). At the same time, if there were ever a case extreme enough to justify the death penalty, this could be it &#8212; 48 women dead over 20-some years, merely because Ridgeway didn&#8217;t like prostitutes. Obviously, rehabilitation isn&#8217;t an option in some cases, and while Ridgeway&#8217;s death certainly wouldn&#8217;t bring any of his victims back, or ease the pain for their families, it could provide a sense of closure and finality for many people that merely locking him away for the rest of his life wouldn&#8217;t do. But what got the judge to accept the plea bargain and to allow Ridgeway to live was Ridgeway&#8217;s promise to reveal the location of <em>even more<\/em> remains so that they can be exhumed, identified, and hopefully returned to their families, which I can only see as a good thing, allowing more people to get a certain amount of closure in the death of their loved ones.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s certainly not an easy situation. I don&#8217;t envy the judge, nor any of the other people involved in this case. No matter what, not everyone is going to be satisfied with the final outcome.<\/p>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/2hrlunch.typepad.com\/bloggo\/2003\/11\/comics_as_journ.html\" title=\"Comics as Journalism\">pops<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Local weekly newspaper The Stranger has an excellent summary of Gary Ridgeway&#8217;s day in court confessing to 48 counts of murder as the Green River Killer &mdash; and plea bargaining to avoid the death sentence in the process &mdash; in the form of a 24-panel black and white comic strip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}