Fifty-six-year-old Evelyn Border and 35-year-old Tina Griekspoor stood outside the court for 4 1/2 hours Tuesday. They held signs that read: “I stole from a 9-year-old girl on her birthday! Don’t steal or this could happen to you!”
The 9-year-old had placed her gift card on a shelf in Wal-Mart as a clerk helped her, when these two nimrods swiped it.
Before someone has a fit about "personal dignity," these two agreed to do this in exchange for jail time. So in my opinion, they are fair game for someone to drive by with a taunt or two.
No eggs. That's just wasting food. And it's battery.
12 comments:
See I think this is a swell idea!!
I have said that if Bernie Madoff had to sit in a stock out of Wall Street or maybe Central Park where everyone could come by and just let him have it that would be a just punishment.
Perfect penance. Can't even think of anything better to show how awful their crime was.
What, no actual stocks? This was a nine year old. You have a nine year old. Where's the sympathy for the victim? He'd be crushed if he couldn't score that transformer.
I'd have put them in the stocks and let them take it up on appeal.
Gee, the Church did this centuries ago...public penitents...maybe we should consider reinstating it...wouldn't it be grand to see Pelosi, Biden, P. Kennedy standing outside a church with a placard:
"I used to help provide for the killing of the unborn...and now I'm sorry and ask God's forgiveness"?
Just a thought.
Well, my problem with all the attention this story has gotten is not so much the public dignity angle. It's that the glee we feel for seeing these two "nimrods" get an instructive humiliation degrades *us* not them. Their "walk of shame" should not be our national "superior dance." Doesn't anyone say "There, but for the grace of God, go I." anymore?
No, because the grace of God has nothing to do with it. Character and responsibility for one's conduct does.
Cody,
They didn't trip on a sidewalk. They stole a nine year old's gift card. There's no schadenfreude involved.
All we're saying is that if a public shaming is what it takes to get these two to keep their hands to themselves, so be it.
Are we Catholics here? God's Grace is the source of *every* good decision we make, *every* blessing. We are *worthy* of nothing because it has all been given to us by God.
So, when I see pictures of those two sad people on the sidewalk holding signs, I have occasion to count the many blessings and graces from God (alone!) that led to me being raised with love, patience, mercy, and swift swats on the butt as needed. You call it personal responsibility. I call it God's Grace. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
It all comes from God, not us. If we have it and those public penitents don't, then thank God and don't taunt, jest, and make fun. Suggest praying Psalm 50 instead.
oops, Psalm 51 (50 is the Greek numbering) :)
Cody, it is true: Jesus tells us that without Him, we can do nothing. And it's true we should not give in to pride. But let's face it: these people had this coming.
Personally, I'm in favor of punishments like these in lieu of jail. It is an easy, economical and effective way for people to pay their debts to society. Call me crazy (especially as I am a criminal lawyer) but the "rehabilitative" approach via probation and counseling and classes, etc., etc., etc. is making the system spin out of control, to the considerable financial benefit of the people who provide these services. I'm not really sure the extent to which crushing defendants under an ever-mounting burden of supervision fees, costly classes and rehab and drug tests and other programs over a period of years -- on top of their fines and court costs -- is "rehabilitative."
I'm not saying that they didn't have it coming. I found the punishment very appropriate and, in it's own way, quite merciful. They chose to wear the signs, after all.
What I find distasteful is when we in the Church point and laugh at the sins of others. Our glee is the reverse of the Gospel. Negative evangelism. And even though we regularly ask Him in the Our Father to do otherwise, I am grateful that God shows us infinitely more mercy than we show one another.
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