As I write this post,  I am watching a four part CNN story about a soldier who executed two Iraqi prisoners of war and covered it up for nine months. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are calling for leniency. “These men,” they say, “are distinguished veterans; who were caught up in the horror of war.”

This country understands how to forgive. In fact, I believe we have a great capacity for both understanding and forgiveness. What I don’t understand is how our system of “impartial laws” can be so cruel as to misunderstand our children’s fears and misjudge them so profoundly that the only option we see is to try them as adults without so much as a hearing from a juvenile judge.

That is the callousness with which the Grand Junction District Attorney judged, tried and sentenced Cheyenne Corbett to 16 years in prison for what she thought, as a scared teenager, was the still birth of her first child. According to the story by Lisa McDivitt at NBC 11 News in Grand Junction, the District Attorney said that Corbett never showed remorse. But according to the transcript from McDivitt’s interview with Corbett, the District Attorney never even spoke to her, let alone asked if she felt remorse.

So I ask again: Is this justice–really? If this is justice then we might as well give up teaching religion, philosophy, and law because you won’t find the Grand Junction DA’s brand of justice in any book on the subject.