What the Judge Ate for Breakfast

A lot of the people using this meme have blogged about trivial stuff. My time has been absorbed by the grim reality of the justice system, so that’s what I’ve chosen to write about. Here are thoughts, observations and personal notes that are helping me process the trial I’ve covered the past three weeks — a day after seeing Justin Thurber sentenced to death for killing Jodi Sanderholm:

• The details I don’t, and won’t, report about the brutality of the crime are the ones that keep me awake at night.
• There is no way to try to make sense of a senseless crime.
• Here’s something else that doesn’t make sense. Even after being convicted, under overwhelming evidence , Thurber told a psychologist a version of how he claimed to kill Sanderholm — by stabbing her — that could not be supported by any other physical evidence.
• Defense attorney Ron Evans gave one of the most stirring closing arguments I’ve ever heard. But even that didn’t convince a jury to spare Thurber’s life.
• In a country where everyone is guaranteed the right to a legal defense, I have to respect lawyers such as Ron Evans and Tim Frieden, who choose to represent defendants charged with the worst crimes.
• Cowley County Attorney Chris Smith asked that people remember the Thurber family’s suffering, even after he’d spent two years working to prosecute Thurber. I’ve known Smith for years, and that tells you how compassionate he is.
• For some, the stress doesn’t stop — assistant Kansas Attorney General Vic Braden will go from prosecuting this case to being deployed to Afghanistan for the Kansas National Guard in April.
• Cindy Sanderholm, Jodi’s mother, told me she realized that large groups of people had offered support to their family throughout the past two years, but Thurber’s family had little community support.
• Brian Sanderholm, whose family had been in the news spotlight for two years, thanked reporters after the trial for their sensitivity. It’s something you don’t hear often in my job.
• Burying myself in my stories is a way to deal with the pain I see in the courtroom.
• “It’s given me insight into our court system that I hadn’t had before.” Comments like that, from Skyler Lovelace, and others who follow my coverage on Twitter, remind me why my job is important.
• I woke up with chest pains Tuesday morning, before the verdict, caused by the anxiety of the trial.
• I was in tears on the drive back to Wichita from Winfield Tuesday, trying to absorb all the emotions I’d experienced.
• I celebrated my birthday and my wedding anniversary during the trial.
• I just have to sit in the courtroom and hear words and see pictures. The police are the ones who actually see the crime up close and live with it.
• I especially have to admire the police who sifted through the waste tank at the lakeside latrine where they retrieved Jodi Sanderholm’s shoes, jacket and belongings. Anyone who’s held their nose while using such a restroom can only imagine the dedication that must take.
• I wonder how Dave Falletti of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the lead investigator of the case, digests all the brutality he’s seen.
• The police in Arkansas City, a town of 12,000, showed the same high level of investigative skills as what I’ve seen from Wichita police in similar cases. That speaks well of law enforcement training, no matter what the department’s size.
• After seeing the pictures of the crime scene and the state of Jodi Sanderholm’s body, I keep asking myself, “What would enrage someone to the point they’d be capable of this?”
• They were some of the most disturbing crime-scene photos I’d ever seen.
• I have no doubt Jodi Sanderholm was tortured.
• After I go through weeks like this, I make sure I have someone to talk to about the worst of it.
• I hope more testing is done on Thurber’s IQ and mental state before his death sentence is carried out.
• After a decade of covering capital murder trials, and seeing the violence people are capable of inflicting on each other, I’m still not sure how I feel about the death penalty.
• There is nothing more sobering than watching 12 people condemn another human being to die.