Christopher Nolan's Kangaroo Court

The latest Batman movie carries the burden of being the occasion for the murderous assault in Aurora, Colorado, in July. A deranged graduate student named James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 59 in a shooting spree in a suburban theater during an opening-weekend screening of the film.

As the legal process for Holmes takes its course, the film itself is winding down its theatrical run. With video and other distribution channels in the pipeline, films don’t stay very long in theaters these days. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the theater in Burnsville, Minnesota, where I saw The Dark Knight Rises was one of the smallest I’d ever been in.

It was so small that the disparity between the large screen and the tiny room was quite incongruous.

Rather incongruous, too, is director Christopher Nolan’s plotting of the film. Strangely enough, in a movie featuring such over-the-top violence, Nolan at times seems on the verge of raising the question of whether violence is ever justified — even when responding to violence.

Unfortunately, that theme never really crystallizes. But the film contains some memorable individual scenes. Naturally, for purposes of this blog, I was struck by the sessions of the kangaroo court that is capable of issuing only death sentences.

Ostensibly, prisoners are given a choice: exile or death. Exile, however, turns out to be over the not-quite-frozen river, and therefore a de facto death sentence.

What was the context, I wonder, in which the term “kangaroo court” was coined? It dates, according to Webster’s, to 1853.

The larger question, however, is whether the entire film is a type of kangaroo court. One definition of such a court, after all, is of "a judgment or punishment given outside of legal procedure." In effect, the entire film comprises that kind of court.

Bring Your Toothbrush

Prison or probation?

Even in states with structured sentencing systems, the answer to this fundamental question isn’t always known when someone is convicted of a crime.

Often, however, there are indicators of how the decision will go.

Consider, for example, a sex offense case last fall in Minnesota involving a priest who had sex with a young woman he was counseling. She was dealing with an eating disorder and in a vulnerable state from childhood sexual abuse.

The priest, Rev. Christopher Wenthe, did not deny having sexual contact with the 21-year-old woman. But he claimed the sex was consensual.

The jury did not agree and convicted him of criminal sexual conduct in the third degree on November 15.

The Ramsey County prosecutors, David Hunt and Kevin Kugler, moved to have Wenthe immediately taken into custody. The district judge, the Hon. Margaret Marrinan, denied that motion.

Wenthe’s defense attorney, Paul Engh, indicated he would seek a sentence of probation at the sentencing hearing in December. Though Judge Marrinan did not tip her hand completely, she did give Engh and his client a reality check.

“The court will direct the defendant to bring his toothbrush,” the judge said, for the sentencing hearing on December 14.

At that hearing, as the Star Tribune reported, Judge Marrinan sentenced Rev. Wenthe to a year in the workhouse.

A Sentencing Prayer

The convicted person does not always speak at the sentencing hearing, much less offer a word of prayer. Yet a prayer is essentially what Moises Aguilar Nieves offered at his sentencing on February 27 for unintentional second-degree murder.

Nieves, a 36-year-old man from the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield, received a 15-year prison sentence (with the final third to be served on supervised release) for driving his 5,000-pound GMC Yukon into David Ramirez, 46, in St. Paul last October. The prosecution argued successfully that Nieves did this in a fit of jealousy upon seeing Ramirez talking with Maria Rocha, 23, a former girlfriend of Ramirez’s with whom Nieves was in love — despite having five children with his longtime girlfriend.

At Nieves’s sentencing, a Spanish interpreter read a letter written by the longtime girlfriend, describing the suffering of the children without their father, particularly a 16-year-old son who had dropped out of school. A few feet away, a three-year-old son squirmed in his seat in the courtroom, not grasping the gravity of the scene unfolding in front of him.

When it was Nieves’s turn to speak, he asked for forgiveness not only from Ramirez’s family and his own, but from the Lord. He implored the judge for mercy, said he hoped one day to be free, and ended with “Amen.”

In fifteen years, Moises Aguilar Nieves will have served his sentence. But will he ever be free of the burden of the pain he caused? Even if his prayer is answered, neither God’s forgiveness nor the forgiveness of others can change the past. Nieves will have to learn to live with the sadness flowing from his decision to rev up his huge vehicle and take aim at his (supposed) rival. The mark of Cain was intended for protection, not a curse, but it has never been easy to bear.