Thursday, August 12, 2004
 
No Sympathy For The Devil

Here's the teaser for Bill McClellan's latest column in the St. Louis Post-Distpatch: After 30 years, he's faced with life on the outside. So I started to read it.

Here's the heart-rending:
    "I'm about ready to give up," he told me Tuesday afternoon, and I thought for a moment that he was going to cry. I asked if he were happy to be out of prison, and he shook his head.

    His story was front-page stuff 30 years ago. He was 36 years old, and by all accounts, a simple man. He had a seventh-grade education. He had never been in trouble.
Man, that does sound like a rough bit. He's been in prison for a long time, and a lot of the world undoubtedly must seem strange to someone who flashed forward three particularly changing decades. I sympathized with him. Hey, armed robbery, drug dealing, maybe a repeat offense for burglary, and suddenly you're in a time warp.

Except this guy:
    In November 1973, his wife left him and took their young son. Epps went to the police and filed a missing person report. He said he thought his wife's family knew where she was. A patrolman drove him to his in-laws' house, but they said they had not seen her. The patrolman took Epps back to the station, but he returned to the house and shot and killed his wife's mother and her grandparents.
End of sympathy, and shame on you, McClellan, for presenting him as a tragic figure. Yes, I see he's only had a seventh grade education and thus missed the Don't Kill Your Inlaws unit in eighth grade social studies, but I am not sparing any of my compassion on him.

Couldn't you have written about another little man who needed defending from the iniquities of the real world, McClellan?


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:52 PM
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