Miles Harrison
As he’s being charged manslaughter, I’m wondering if Miles Harrison has suffered enough already. There’s no way I can see any court-imposed punishment coming close to the beating he gives himself every waking moment.
To bring everyone up to speed, let’s review his case with a little help from the WashPost article:
Police said Harrison had adopted the boy from Russia three months earlier. According to court documents, Harrison told police that he left his home in Purcellville about 6:45 a.m. July 8. He apparently had intended to drop the child at a day-care center.
Harrison arrived at his office, Project Solutions Group, and left Chase in the back seat, police said. The temperature reached a high of 90 degrees, which one expert estimated would have made the temperature about 130 degrees in the Yukon. A co-worker reported that someone went to the company’s front desk about 5 p.m. and asked whether something was inside Harrison’s car. He ran outside and found his son, police said.
Now call me soft, but I don’t think jail time is needed in this case. Miles broken heart and abyss of guilt is deeper than any sentence, nor can any other person be a harsher judge than his own mind, and immediate family.
For me, I send him the deepest sympathy. A morning of forgetfulness has beget a life of sorrow unimaginable.
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Seriously? He left a kid to die in a car. His only punishment can’t just be bad feelings. It wasn’t malicious, but that’s why he’s charged with manslaughter.
Seriously, Wayan?
Jail. And a lot of it.
This whole story made my cry and gave me nightmares. I have a 24 mo old daughter and it cut very close to my heart.
Jail is just us being mean. It won’t cause him not to do it again (he won’t, he wasn’t intending in the first place); it won’t bring the kid back; it won’t change anything but it will further destroy a destroyed man. I’m with Wayan – the worst think you could do to him is have him work in a pre-school for the rest of his days, so it hurts every day even more than it does now.
But instead we’ll jail him, at no small cost, which won’t mean anything to him and will only mean that there’s less he can do to in any way heal or do good in the world again.
Will and Tom,
What is jail going to do? Like Sophiagrrl says, he’s already a broken man. He was in the psych ward, on suicide watch I’ll bet, from the day it happened till the court date.
If you want punishment, how about having him make a PSA to run on Heat Advisory days? That would do more good for society than locking this man up.