Empty Promises

and her younger brother, Jimmy. “We went down to the Willamette River to get some crawdads for Jimmy’s show-and-tell at school,” she said softly. “My little brother found a hatchet in the river, and I carried it for him when we walked through the woods on the way home.”
    It was clear that Maria was reliving the terror of that day. “We heard some noise in the bushes,” she told the jury, “but there were always birds and animals in there, so we kept walking. All of a sudden, everything went really blurry. I was just standing there and I saw this figure in front of me. I threw the hatchet at it. I remember yelling, ‘Please stop!’ I looked for my little brother and I ran to the house that was nearby. I collapsed there and people came out to help. Then my mom came down, and I remember the ride to the hospital. I was in the hospital for about a week.” The knife had been plunged into the children’s bodies so swiftly that they had no warning. It was a scene reminiscent of the movie, Psycho .
    Jimmy Coleman—eight years old at the time of the attack—told the jury much the same story. He remembered only “a flash of silver” before he and Maria ran blindly to a house where he remembered a woman who began to scream when she saw the blood on their chests.
    Summer Rogers’s mother took the stand to recall the day her five-year-old daughter vanished. Stoically, she identified the remnants of the bloodstained blue-and-white bathing suit found on Summer’s torso.
    One of the few times Arnold Brown showed any emotion came when his former cell mate took the stand. He was visibly startled when the man recounted the confession Arnold gave him in the King County jail a few days after Jannie’s death.
    “He said he was going fishing and had seen Summer Rogers,” the witness said, “and she asked him where he was going. He said ‘Fishing’ and she asked to go along … She went, and they were down by the river, and she wasn’t looking at him, and he hit her in the head and cut her up—cut her head off, and her arms and legs off…. He [said] he threw the knife away in the rapids and then went fishing in another part of the river.”
    But there was still no way to prove that Summer Rogers’s killer had actually dismembered her; Jim Pex, a forensic expert from the Oregon State Police Crime Lab, testified that the loss of Summer’s head and limbs was consistent with advanced decomposition of a body immersed in water for a long time.
    Of all the testimony given in the effort to spare Arnold Brown’s life, the most heartrending came from his sister and brother-in-law, Jannie’s adoptive parents. Lorraine Reilly could not bring herself to testify in person; her image appeared on videotape. She begged the jury to save Arnold’s life, not because he was her brother but because she did not believe in the death penalty: “If the jury takes his life, Jannie will have died in vain. I can’t live with that.”
    She said she did not want her son to grow up knowing that the uncle he loved, who had always been so good to him, and who had killed Jannie “in sickness,” was to be killed himself.
    Her plea made little sense. Jannie Reilly had died in vain, no matter what became of the uncle who had killed her.
    Joseph Reilly told the jury that as long as there was life, there was still hope that good could come of it. He too pleaded for Brown’s life and wept when he finished his statement.
    But Arnold Brown sat stonily, as he had throughout all the proceedings. He scarcely glanced at his brother-in-law. The Reillys had demonstrated the ultimate in turning the other cheek. But the vital question hung in the courtroom: If Arnold Brown had not been forgiven and released so often, how many lives might have been spared horrible physical and emotional damage? How many victims might have been spared?
    Many, many individuals with IQ’s in Arnold’s range are able to marry, raise families, work successfully at jobs, and bring credit to their communities. They feel guilt and pain and empathy for others. It would take a team of brilliant psychiatrists to explain why Arnold Brown’s psyche developed in such a warped fashion and why he struck out at helpless children when he felt frustrated. Arnold Brown knew right from wrong, but he had been allowed to think that he was special, and he had soon learned that there were ways around the law. His family paid a terrible price for their indulgence.
    If Brown was to receive