The Forgiving Animal

Forgiving wrongs is as central to our humanity as punishing them. In fact, forgiveness and punishment are really just two sides of the same evolutionary coin. Punishment evolved only because it evolved in a restrained way, and the urge to forgive was an important restraining force.

The most moving courtroom experiences I’ve ever had have come during sentencing hearings in homicide cases, when family members of murder victims told their loved ones’ killers that they forgave them. Although this is by no means a common occurrence, it happens more often than you might think. Of the roughly three dozen homicide cases I’ve presided over, I can remember four where at least one member of the victim’s family expressed forgiveness. Nothing victims say at a sentencing hearing hasmore impact, not just on the audience, the lawyers, and the judges, but especially on the defendants. It can be shocking to watch a murderer sit emotionless as his victim’s survivors try to express their profound loss. But on those occasions when a survivor said, “I forgive you,” in all four cases the murderers broke down and wept. What a strange and complicated species we are when words of forgiveness can touch us but words of the grievous loss we caused cannot.