Some highs and lows this week.
In Memoriam
Received word on Memorial Day that one of my fellow Hardheim MPs had died on that morning, just 28 days after his cancer diagnosis.
Chris Burkhardt served 4 years in the Army, primarily at Hardheim, Germany, as a Hawk MP. He also attended DLI learning German. They told him that as an MP with a German certificate from DLI, he’d likely get a cushy customs gig or something similar. Instead, he ended up in the boondocks working a gate at a Hawk tactical site.
He made my time there bearable.
After the Army, he worked in retail loss prevention for a couple of years, then served 20 years with the city of Dublin, OH, and Washington TWP as a dispatcher and dispatcher supervisor. He retired in January.
Rest well, sir. Peace and strength to his family and friends.
I know a number of my Hardheim comrades (and former MPs) have suffered from a variety of cancers, and a part of me wonders how many of those result from being around the missile radars in the battery, and the chemical stuff at Fort McClellan.
Family News
McNugget Tamer and Number Two Son announced a while back that they were expecting a baby in July. This would be their first, though she had two kids from a previous relationship.
Then about ten days ago, they posted in our family group chat that her water had broken.
Eep. She was only about 32 weeks along.
Number Two Son drove her to the local hospital, and they pretty quickly sent her via ambulance to a Tulsa hospital, since the local joint doesn’t have a NICU. There was another health concern beyond just early labor, too, so that seemed to be the best idea.
She got stuck on bed rest waiting for a C-section, and she was not happy with sitting around doing nothing.
But everything went well, and Number Two Grandson arrived Friday morning at about 34 weeks, weighing 5 pounds, 1 ounce. He and McNugget Tamer are both doing well, the last I heard, and we’re looking forward to meeting him soon.
Pennsylvania Exoneration
Three men were exonerated this week in Pennsylvania for a murder they didn’t commit.
Jermal Shuler, Rasheed Turner, and Marc Brittingham had been convicted in 1997 of killing 73-year-old Essie May Thomas of Philadelphia.
It took the Innocence Project 17 years to get them released.
The case hinged on the testimony of an eyewitness who claimed she saw the men on the victim’s porch on a Saturday night, which jibed with the coroner’s original determination of the time of death. Then the time of death changed, and problems turned up with the eyewitness’s motivation. Finally, prosecutors agreed their case had fallen apart.
Essie May Thomas is still dead. Her nephew, Eric Palmer, who found her body, pointed out that “There is no justice for my aunt.” He’s right. She died almost thirty years ago. The original eyewitness has lost all credibility, and whatever physical evidence there might have been likely no longer exists or has degraded so much as to be useless.
And what of Shuler, Turner, and Brittingham now? What do they get from the state of Pennsylvania to compensate them for the last 29 years they spent in prison?
Nothing.
Pennsylvania doesn’t have a compensation program in place for wrongful convictions. Advocates have been working on it for years, but as recently as last year, they’re no closer than they’ve been for the last twenty years.
The only solution for wrongfully convicted persons is to sue for damages. The problem then becomes proving that their conviction was the result of malicious action, which is hard to do, especially when the conviction happened so long ago.
Perversely, many exonerees aren’t eligible for re-entry services, because their convictions have disappeared. They’re no longer former convicts, just people with 29-year gaps in their resumes.
There’s no justice for them, either.
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