Restorative Justice: How Law Schools Can Help Heal Their Communities

Fordham Urban Law Journal, Dec 2007

This Essay argues that the justice system should establish a parallel system, using restorative justice, designed to "heal" those individuals affected by crime, but who are not the victim, i.e. the victim's family. Additionally, the author proposes that law schools should help develop this parallel system.

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2268&context=ulj

Restorative Justice: How Law Schools Can Help Heal Their Communities

Thi s Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The F ordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Urban Law Journal by an authorized editor of FLASH: The F ordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information Restorative Justice: How Law Schools Can Help Heal Their C ommunities Rachel King 0 1 0 Howard University School of Law 1 Rachel King, Restorative Justice: How Law Schools Can Help Heal Th eir Communities , 34 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1285 (2007). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ulj/vol34/iss4/5 Part of the Criminal Law Commons Recommended Citation - Article 5 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ulj Rachel King* I. INTRODUCTION—THE LIMITATIONS OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE PARADIGM A. Azim Khamisa’s Story1 On Saturday night, January 21, 1995, nineteen-year-old Tariq Khamisa was delivering pizzas at DeMille’s Italian Restaurant in San Diego, California. His pizza-delivery job helped pay some of his college expenses at San Diego State University. He was getting ready to leave for the evening when his boss asked him to make one last delivery. Reluctantly, Tariq agreed. Before doing so, he stopped by his girlfriend’s house to bring her a soda.2 Tariq drove to the address, a large housing project on Louisiana Street in San Diego’s working-class North Park neighborhood. He searched in vain for Unit D. After knocking on several doors, he realized there was no Unit D—the order had been a hoax. As he walked back to his Volkswagen, a boy pointed a gun at him and said, “Pizza man, give me those pizzas.” Tariq ignored him and kept walking back to his car. He tossed the pizzas inside and started to drive away. The boy fired. The nine-millimeter slug shattered the car window, ripping through Tariq’s arms and chest, killing him immediately.3 The police easily located the assailant, Tony Hicks, who was already in custody for stealing his grandfather’s gun. Tariq’s father, Azim, was devastated by his son’s senseless murder. The case * At the time of writing this Essay, Rachel King taught legal research and writing at Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. Before Howard, she served in the Washington National Office of the American Civil Liberties Union lobbying on criminal justice issues and working in the Capital Punishment Project. She has written two books and numerous articles and reports about criminal justice and death penalty issues. In April 2007, she began serving as a lawyer for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary under Congressman John Conyers. 1. All references to Azim’s story come from the author’s book, RACHEL KING, DON’T KILL IN OUR NAMES: FAMILIES OF MURDER VICTIMS SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY 250 (2003). 2. Id. 3. Id. [Vol. XXXIV quickly became high-profile and political because Tony was the first fourteen-year-old to be prosecuted as an adult under California’s new, tougher laws enabling juveniles to be prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system.4 The case engendered much debate—some supported the law while others opposed it.5 Azim did not take part in the debate, which to him seemed irrelevant. No matter what happened to Tony, it would not bring his son back. My thoughts and emotions began to return the day after we buried Tariq. One of the first emotions I felt was anger. However, it was not directed at Tariq’s assailants. The entire society was the object of my rage. I wondered how it was that in our great country children too young to have a driver’s license are not too young to carry a gun. Why do we spend billions on wars on foreign soil or conquering space, when every day, in our own backyard, our defenseless children are wiped out in a frenzy of bizarre violence? Why couldn’t our intelligent nation, the world’s only superpower, get its priorities right? How many more children would have to be sacrificed? When did we start accepting these killings? And why did we allow them to continue?6 Tony was sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison, but the harsh punishment did nothing to ease Azim’s pain: Sentencing Tony to prison did not make me feel whole. It did nothing to bring Tariq back. We need a justice system that is more holistic. We have to look at where violence comes from. Parents are not only responsible. All of society is responsible. I was starting to think more about the concept of restorative justice, especially for juveniles. Our system is based on retributive justice, which punishes the offender and ends there. Restorative justice seeks to make both parties whole. We need to be realistic that if we do not change offenders, we as a society will continue to suffer.7 With the help of the district attorney, Azim contacted Tony’s grandfather and guardian, Plex Ferguson, a very unusual thing to do. Through Plex, he began corresponding with Tony in prison, and eventually chose to meet Tony in person. Azim be (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2268&context=ulj

Rachel King. Restorative Justice: How Law Schools Can Help Heal Their Communities, Fordham Urban Law Journal, 2007, pp. 1285, Volume 34, Issue 4,