Lessons Learned From a Tragic Death

Last Friday, a Sacramento radio station held an early-morning contest in which 20 people off the street competed to see who could drink the most water over several hours without going to the bathroom or throwing up. The grand prize was a new Nintendo video game called the Wii. I don't listen to this station or play video games. The reason I'm writing about this is that one of the contestants died later as the apparent result of acute "water intoxication," and ten employees of the radio station were fired in the aftermath. The contestant was Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old mother of three. She drank nearly two gallons of water in less than four hours before giving up after complaining that she had a headache and felt light-headed. She drove home, calling in sick to work along the way, and was found dead at home by her mother several hours later. The fired employees were the five on-air personalities from the show and supporting staff.

The Sacramento County sheriff announced that he lacked cause to conduct a criminal investigation of the incident. "It's not as if [Ms Strange] was somehow in their custody and they had a role to care for her," he said. "Rather, it was an invitation to a contest that was clearly ill-advised. She was exercising her free will." I'm not a lawyer and don't really know what the law has to say about the issue of criminal negligence, but I suspect that the sheriff is right so far as possible criminal prosecution is concerned. A lawsuit in the civil court may be an entirely different matter, and a personal injury attorney commenting on the case has already said as much. No one forced Ms. Strange to drink all that water, and she even signed a waiver absolving the radio station of all responsibility for whatever happened, but I can well imagine a slick civil lawyer making a persuasive case that those radio station employees not only should have known about the perils of water intoxication but actually did know about them and said as much on the air during the contest, and that it was, therefore, their responsibility not to put people in harm's way. At the very least, they should have made sure that all the contestants were fully apprised of the risk they were taking on.

Along with the issue of legal responsibility, I have questions about moral responsibility and about whether the ten radio staff involved in this unfortunate affair have been treated fairly. I have mixed thoughts and emotions about all of this. Let me begin by saying it's a terrible tragedy that this mother of three young children who put herself through the ordeal of the contest in order to win an expensive video game system for her children died from her efforts. Yet, having said this, it seems to me that too many people are too quick to blame others for their own foolish actions and that this growing shift of responsibility for one's actions from oneself onto others may not be such a good thing for our society. On the other hand, I recognize the psychological reality that people are naturally inclined to place their trust in authority figures. For Jennifer Strange, those radio personalities were probably people she trusted to know that the contest they were sponsoring was unlikely to present any serious threat to her health. Should she have trusted them? Obviously not. But people foolishly exhibit such trust frequently, and this should be taken into account whenever we contemplate involving others in dangerous activities.

I don't want to write a philosophical tome on the subject. I'll just say that, based on my admittedly limited understanding of the facts of the case and of all the legal principles and issues involved, I'm inclined to believe that there should be no criminal prosecution in this case, that if a civil suit is brought forth (as it almost certainly will be) it should fail (even though it probably won't), and that the radio station was justified in firing at least the five participating on-air personalities (although I'm not sure about the other staff members) involved with the show in question. In any case, I hope this tragedy makes people less inclined to participate in dangerous activities under the auspices of individuals or institutions they shouldn't necessarily trust just because they happen to hold positions of authority or public prominence, and that it also makes those who hold these positions more circumspect about sponsoring activities in which an impressionable public can place themselves in harm's way.

Let the Healing Begin

I oppose the death penalty. I always have, and I probably always will. I oppose it on philosophical grounds and on more pragmatic ones. But the death penalty is usually carried out against "common people." They may be uncommon in their crimes, but they are "common" in terms of their station in life.

Yet, Saddam Hussein was the president of a prominent country when he was captured. He was tried, convicted, and executed for acts he committed as president of Iraq. Those acts caused death and suffering, both told and untold, for hundreds of thousands if not millions of human beings and brought physical, economic, social, and spiritual ruin to a once relatively prosperous nation.

Despite my general opposition to the death penalty, I confess that I do not mourn the hanging of Saddam Hussein. While I also do not feel happy over his death, I do feel a sense of closure and resulting relief that a man who did monstrous things that impacted his nation and the entire world in terrible ways has been irrevocably removed from the world stage and that perhaps, just perhaps, the healing of people's souls and the slow and arduous rebuilding of a nation can finally begin.

A Beacon in the Darkness

19-year-old Jennifer Ross died on an operating room table a week after being shot while resisting a robbery attempt on Christmas Eve night last year . On Saturday, her convicted killer, 26-year-old Michael Thorpe, cursed and flipped the bird at the judge who sentenced him to life in prison plus 40 years for the girl's murder. I don't believe in the death penalty, but I do believe that Thorpe deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison for his crime.

I don't know what caused Thorpe to commit his terrible crime or to brag about it afterward. But I'd like to think that his sentence may deter others from following in his footsteps and will, at the very least, prevent Thorpe himself from repeating his crime. Yet, even though I don't believe that Thorpe should ever be released from prison, I hope that he finds a way to redeem himself in prison and to help others do the same. His outburst in court would not seem to bode well for his chances of accomplishing this. But I'd like to believe that at the core of every human being lies the wondrous possibility of a quantum leap in personal transformation. I say "I'd like to believe" because I'm not sure I really do. I've been around too long and witnessed too much human violence and depravity to feel convinced that we all possess the magical capacity to rise above the baser aspects of our nature.

However, I believe without question that at least some of us are in touch with a profound and glorious wisdom and strength that virtually no hardship or injustice can steal from us. Jennifer Ross' mother, Coren, reflected this in her remarkable statement after the sentencing. Rather than lash out in hatred and bitterness against her daughther's killer, she opened her heart to pour out her grief over her and her family's loss: "We are broken, both individually and collectively," she said. "Rusty [Jennifer's father] will not walk Jennifer down the aisle at her wedding ... I will not caress her pregnant tummy." But she proceeded to speak of how her daughter's death has at least occasioned an impending deployment of surveillance cameras in busy areas that may discourage future crimes, and she dispelled the notion that race (her daughter was white while her killer and his accomplices were black) played a role in her daughter's murder or in the conduct and outcome of the trial by sagely observing, "Jennifer's murder galvanized and energized everyone who heard about it because it showcased two mentalities, one which still believes you must work for what you want, and one which believes that you can take what someone else has worked for."

Finally, Coren Ross displayed extraordinary compassion when she said of the mothers of her daugher's killers, "We mothers have a whole lot more in common than some people might expect. My heart just breaks for them." Previously, just before the trial, she had said, "I believe these young men to be victims as much as anything else. There is part of me that would say to them, 'I'm so sorry that your life brought you to this point.'"

I am awed and inspired by the beauty of this woman's unconditional love, wisdom, and compassion in the face of awful tragedy. May we find it in ourselves to follow her resplendent example through whatever "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" may befall us.