Recrimination, Incrimination, Interpretation

What a horrible waste; two young lives lost. One, the victim, lost forever to his family who will never see him smile again, embrace him, celebrate with him, express their love for him, together. His parents, his siblings, his nephews will retain the dense misery of the pain forever lodged in their hearts, and call up unbidden, memories of what they've lost, stricken by thoughts of his last desperate moments in life.

The other, an arrogant, aggressive, psychopath whose crime of murder, although he was only 17 at the time he took it upon himself to cruelly torture another soul, then take his life, has been tried in a court of law, and sentenced as an adult. Shawn McKenzie, taller, larger, stronger, and with a pack of his friends, intimidated an innocent passenger on a public transit bus in Ottawa.

When the drama of confronting, intimidating, threatening, and finally murdering Michael Oatway had concluded, what precisely might Shawn McKenzie have felt he had accomplished, one can only wonder. The 23-year-old young man with the fullness of his life ahead of him, en route to visiting with his future wife had not the slightest inkling this would be his final passage in life.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger informed the courtroom packed with onlookers that it was his opinion a youth sentence was insufficient to fully reflect the extent of Shawn McKenzie's crime. It was his studied opinion that Shawn McKenzie did not represent as someone who could be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society through means of a youth court sentence.

"Shawn McKenzie is entirely responsible for the killing of Michael Oatway. His moral culpability is complete. Shawn McKenzie pulled out a knife in circumstances that were reckless and dangerous. He intentionally approached an innocent bystander on a bus and ultimately deliberately caused the death of that innocent bystander", commented Judge Maranger.

Mr. McKenzie has received a life sentence for the murder he committed, and for which he has demonstrated no remorse. He could have desisted during the confrontation he provoked with Mr. Oatway; one or more of his companions made an attempt to draw him away, but he persisted, determined to demonstrate how powerful a bully he envisioned himself as being, and in the process surpassed even his friends' expectations.

"In this case, the harm runs very long and very deep. The lost love, the anguish and anger caused by this crime, are impossible to measure or to convey, through my words" the judge said prior to reading Mr. Oatway's mother's victim-impact statement. The judge also based the sentence he handed down on his having noted that there was no sign of remorse or regret evidenced throughout the court proceedings.

Mr. McKenzie's mother feels, unlike the Oatway family, that justice has been far too harsh on her misunderstood son. She attested that she considered him to be a good son. "There are worse killers out there than my son. My son is not a killer", she claimed. On the incontrovertible evidence, however, he is that, and more. Her son's actions were an anomaly, she claims, not representative of his true character.

"He said to me once, 'Mom, I messed up, but never like this'", she said as evidence of her belief that he did feel badly about what he had done. Surely as his mother she would have asked: "Why would you do such a thing?" To which he might have responded that he 'messed up'. Tantamount to expressing regret that his actions would cost him dearly.

And so they have. He will be confined for a considerable length of time, and during that confinement his already-obvious unwillingness to become a valued member of society will have been exacerbated by the convicted's emotions of anger, humiliation and blame of others, along with his prison interaction with more hardened of society's pathological human failures.

He, at least, will one day have his life and his freedom restored. What he has destroyed can never become whole again.