justice

At the same time I was working on a story about the Alabama Prison Arts + Education project, I was covering a murder trial.

Not one of those murder trials where it could go either way.

Everyone knew Courtney Lockhart was guilty. He confessed. And everyone wanted blood. Courtney’s blood.

Bastard.

Murderer.

Scum.

I saw it on the faces of Lauren Burk’s family, I saw it on the faces of her sorority sisters and I heard it all around me on campus.

As I listened to the stories of murderers-turned-artists in Alabama prisons, however, I secretly began to think more about Courtney Lockhart the man rather than Courtney Lockhart the cold-blooded killer.

Everyone was saying, “I don’t know how those guys defend garbage like that.”

I saw his mother sitting in the courtroom everyday.

People thought he should get the death penalty.

I thought about his daughter.

What he did was terrible—there’s no doubt about that. I still don’t walk alone on campus at night because of the man. My heart breaks when I think about Lauren dying so young. Hot tears streamed down my supposed-to-be-professional face in the courtroom when her father testified about the night he found out his daughter was dead. I cried all the way home that first day.

As I thought about it more that week, I realized I wasn’t just crying for Lauren.

I was crying for Courtney, too. I wish he hadn’t done it. His life is over.

But does it have to be?

Courtney Lockhart is going to prison for life. But he is still a human being, just like those inmates who write poetry and paint beautiful art. The damage Courtney did is fresh, but after learning about this program, I think he still deserves a chance to live, even if it’s within the walls of a prison.

I’ve never had to truly struggle like so many of these men and women who commit horrible crimes. My dad wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t completely disappear. I never served in the military. I’ve never lived in my car because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I’ve never been alone.

Courtney has.

Now, Courtney will spend the rest of his life in prison—as he should.

I just hope that someone will reach out to him there to help him overcome the issues that drove him to rob and murder Lauren Burk in the first place.

I hope someone like Kyes Stevens will look Courtney Lockhart in the eye one day and tell him it doesn’t matter anymore.

He can still smile. He can still learn. I hope he picks up a paintbrush or writes something he never thought he could write.

I hope Courtney Lockhart finds himself.

One life was already cut short unnecessarily.

I hope another life won’t be completely wasted.

loss

She got up before the sun rose every day, drank her coffee and went running. She participated in marathons and triathlons. She was a member of the same workout class for eight years.

This woman loved exercise. And it killed her.

At 5:45 a.m. Nov. 5, Marie Wooten was struck by a car and died at the scene.

Even a week later, it makes me shiver and tears well up in my eyes just thinking about it.

Did I know this woman? No. I had never even heard her name before she died.

But I know her now. For the third time this semester, I have gotten to know someone after their death.

Wooten was superwoman.

Her planner was packed with obligations, every day marked full with precise times and names of the people who depended on her to show up.

She always did.

She recently made a groundbreaking connection between Alzheimer’s disease and obesity. NASA, the USDA and the National Science Foundation funded her research. She was the dean of COSAM. She was a wife.

Yet she still found time to make Jay Gogue laugh at meetings, help Shaista Walji with her undergraduate research and ask Ben Samuelson about his dental school application.

She was supposed to run in a race Saturday and teach cell and molecular signal transduction in the spring.

She had ideas about teaching college students about science through video games.

She grew up in Tennessee as an only child and always wanted to be a scientist.

She had a funny laugh.

I’ve never known someone so intimately without actually knowing them. I wish I could meet her and tell her how much I admire her. I wish I could sit down with her and ask her how she stayed so organized and found the time to do everything she did. I wish I could know what her laugh actually sounded like.

But I can’t.

This isn’t like doing a second grade biography project on Amelia Earhart.

I’ve seen the tears in the eyes of her students. I’ve seen her co-workers sigh with disappointment. I’ve heard about the plans she had that will never come to fruition.

I feel silly for crying as I write this. What right do I have to be upset? What kind of relationship did I ever have with Marie Wooten?

I’m just the journalist who tries to capture the essence of who she was and make it into a 700-word article.

Maybe that’s why I’m crying. It can’t be done.