The conviction last week of Sarah M. Johnson in the murder of her parents, Alan and Diane Johnson, marked the end of a case, but not the end of a terribly sad story.
The Johnson case began the morning of Sept. 2, 2003, when their 16-year-old daughter killed the Johnsons in their Bellevue home. It ended with the now 18-year-old being escorted away in handcuffs to start what is likely to be a lifetime in prison.
There is no joy in justice. There should be no anger in it either, though there often is. It is simply what has to be done, a duty society performs so that it can continue to function.
Justice does not heal the wound the friends and relatives of the Johnsons continue to suffer. It does not provide the answers to why a young girl would take the lives of those who brought her into the world. It simply tells us what happened one morning in the lives of three people.
Our justice system did only what it was supposed to do.
Law enforcement secured a crime scene, preserved evidence and interviewed people. The prosecutors integrated vast amounts of information into a coherent case. A county-appointed attorney provided Sarah Johnson an able defense. All of this the taxpayers paid for with little grumbling.
The judge prevented the trial from becoming a lurid spectacle for a national TV audience. And the jury confronted an awful event in detail, all the while knowing they might have to send an 18-year-old to prison for decades. The profundity of that task cannot be overstated.
Ours is a system that makes knowable only the what of a case.
The why is more illusive. The questions of why and how will stick with this community for a long time. On some level, a community bears a family tragedy as a wound of its own. Whether rational or not, it is what a strong community does. Perhaps it is just a measure of our compassion.
Or perhaps, within all of us is the unsettling idea that we may not ever truly know—as deeply as we wish—those close to us. The demons people wrestle with are as varied as they are subtle. This is not an observation of futility. It is rather a charge to reach out, communicate, and attempt to bridge the distances among us.
Tragedy does not, in fact, must not exist in a vacuum. We should—at the risk of being overwhelmed by it—glean something positive from our tragedies. We can learn. We can try to console the extended Johnson family and friends. We can try to repair what can't be repaired.
In the repairing itself lies all we cherish.
