My newspaper contained disturbing news last week.
A local story reported that a 79-year-old grandmother had died one year after being beaten severely in a robbery by two punks. She had never recovered from a coma.
A national story noted that the 13-year-old student shot by the D.C.-area sniper was released from the hospital. The story also mentioned that businesses in Maryland are collecting money to help defray the boy’s medical expenses.
Sad stories, but what do they have to do with economics?
What struck me was the economic injustice involved when comparing these two helpless individuals’ plights to that of people killed and injured Sept. 11, 2001.
Several weeks ago, Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond firm that lost many employees, advised survivors not to accept offers of federal compensation averaging nearly $2 million per victim because the proposed settlements were “grossly inadequate.”
I have great sympathy for those who lost loved ones and breadwinners at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I am very open to the argument that they deserve some help from society as a whole.
But they should not get huge sums when those hurt by domestic terrorists — such as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 or the beating of Eleanor Stich in the Twin Cities — get nothing.
Historically, the U.S. government has not helped crime victims.
There is some precedent of compensation for war damage dating to the Civil War and World War II. But that was largely for damage to houses shelled in the village of Gettysburg and to Honolulu storefronts hit by anti-aircraft fire during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. To my knowledge, there has never been government compensation to U.S. civilians killed by enemy action.
If the majority of people in our democracy want to continue the existing tradition of not helping crime victims, I can accept that. But it is unfair to give huge amounts to relatives of those killed at the World Trade Center and let the family of a boy shot by a sniper depend on the charity of local businesses.
We are wealthy enough as a nation that we can afford a minimal program of assistance to crime victims.
What is particularly striking about our justice system is how much we are willing to spend on criminal prosecution and defense, but how little we spend on compensating jurors for their time or on crime victims for their losses.
Local, state and federal government spent millions of dollars tracking down the D.C.-area snipers. They could spend millions more prosecuting the two people arrested and will probably spend a hefty amount on public defenders for the accused.
We spent more than $1 million prosecuting Sara Jane Olson and reportedly about the same amount defending her.
I suppose that this all is covered by the maxim, “Let justice be done — though the heavens fall.”
Still, it offends my sense of fairness that we spend so much on lawyers and expert witnesses yet force the family of a grandmother beaten by thugs to deplete their own assets on medical and nursing home care or force local merchants to collect alms to pay the medical bills for an innocent adolescent gunned down by a sniper.
Something is similarly awry in the way we compensate jurors. I recently served as a consulting expert in a corporate lawsuit. I was just one among platoons of experts hired by each side. I was paid as much per hour for reviewing documents and listening to testimony as jurors received for an entire week away from their work or business.
That particular case lasted three weeks, and several jurors were either retired or worked for institutions that granted jury leave with full pay. I don’t think any juror was ruined financially by being forced to decide which of two multibillion-dollar corporations would claim a certain pot of money.
But in the protracted tobacco trial in St. Paul some years ago, some jurors reportedly filed for bankruptcy as a result of being away from their businesses for months on end. What most counties and even the federal government pay jurors is sadly inadequate compared to what many jurors sacrifice — particularly if they are self-employed.
No justice system can ever bring about complete fairness, and no compensation system can ever make crime victims completely whole. But we surely can do better than we are doing at present in fairly sharing the costs of crime and the costs of rendering judgments on indicted criminals.
© 2002 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.