Three generations in the courtroom

For several days I saw an elderly couple in the front row of the gallery. The woman listened to the proceedings with an audio-enhancing device provided by the court. The man wore the scowl of bewilderment I have seen on many old faces. These were the parents of the defendant. Like his son, the father was lean and probably extremely handsome in his younger days. Now he looked tired and pugnacious, sported the same sneer at times, a certain curl of the lip.

Watching that couple and the two young men sitting with the defendant's wife, I thought about how families' philosophies are passed down wordlessly, a strange amalgam of parents' actions and their interpretation by immature minds. I wondered whether Dad had, unwittingly or otherwise, taught the defendant a "might-makes-right" view of the world, and also whether the defendant's two sons had inferred it from their father's behavior.

The majority of jurors said they spent some time sleepless over the effect of the verdict on the defendant's parents.

After we rendered the verdict and had been dismissed, we read in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat an exact answer to my musings about fathers and sons: After we left the courtroom, the defendant's first-born let loose a string of obscenities at the lead detective, the dominant theme being, "You were out to get my dad. If it hadn't been for you - " Another generation learns to lay blame and take no responsibility.