Praying for Derek and George

Our Catholic response to EVERYTHING is: to pray. So, now in the wake of the Derek Chauvin verdict we pray for him and his victim. Only God can really judge the heart of another. Only God can judge any heart: as St. Paul said, we really cannot even judge ourselves. The human heart is opaque, complex, boundlessly mysterious. But we need to make practical decisions such as guilty/not guilty. My view is that our legal system, like our electoral system, remains fundamentally sound, although not infallible. The thrice-guilty verdict is reasonable. Was the jury intimidated by the surrounding threat of violence to a degree that they could not deliberate soberly and fairly? It is possible. But I will assume the basic validity of their decision. That Chauvin did not testify; that there was no strong effort by the defense to illuminate his state of mind and motivation; no sign of remorse or acknowledgment of something like a paralysis of anxiety or confusion that may have mitigated the gravity of his intent...all this suggests that his state of mind probably was "deranged." It seems that he is the sterotypical "bad cop" we know from the movies: a violent, angry man; possibly a sadist and a sociopath. One study indicates that 4% of the population is sociopathic; but 40% of applicants to the police force are such. We do not know for sure. Uncertainly surrounds the event: what was Chauvin thinking and intending? What was the actual cause of death: the experts are in disagreement. But one moral certainty predominates: both these men are desperately in need of God's mercy. Neither is a saint. Chauvin was guilty of an act that was hideously violent by any objective standard. His subjective guilt remains a mystery. He is the most hated person in the country (even more than Trump) and is now going into a prison experience that can only be a personal hell, or at least purgatory. If he is the moral monster he seems to be he needs our prayer even more. His victim, George Floyd, has been declared by Nancy Pelosi to be a saint in heaven, looking down as marytr/patron of the BLM cause. This does not help him. We cannot calculate an equivalence between them, but there is a parralism. Derek's defense argued futilely that his high state of intoxication caused or contributed to his death: not impossible; but we will never know for sure; the jury reasonably ruled otherwise. Certainly it was his pattern of decisions that created the situation: illegal intoxication, apparently a criminal act, resisting arrest. It must be clear that any resistance of arrest immediately creates a life-threatening situation as the police carry lethal weapons and they are forced to use force with all the dangers involved. George was a lifelong criminal, a drug addict, a man who fathered children with various women and then abandoned them. He was charming, dearly beloved by his family, evoked all our sympathy with his excruciating calls for his mother in those horrendous minutes. But he is not a martyr for justice. He was a poor sinner like Derek. He deserves our prayers. They both do.