Let forgiveness be God’s, not state’s

“The cold-blooded callousness of his hate crime is not diminished by the passage of time, nor is any punishment sufficient to expunge the evil he unleashed. Because he has never shown any remorse whatsoever for taking the lives of those innocent little girls, justice can only be served if Thomas Blanton spends the rest of his life in prison.”

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange

One of the most hideous stains on Alabama’s and the nation’s history is the Sept. 15, 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church that claimed the lives of four black children.

Three Ku Klux Klansmen were ultimately indicted for this act of domestic terrorism. One, Robert Chambliss, was convicted 14 years after the crime; the other two, Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., weren’t even indicted until 2000, after the FBI’s investigation was reopened with evidence that included information from a former fellow Klan member. Blanton was convicted in 2001, Cherry the following year.

Chambliss and Cherry died behind bars. So, if justice continues to prevail as it did Wednesday, will Thomas Edwin Blanton.

The sole surviving Klansman convicted in the church bombing, now 78, was denied parole this week, after appeals from the slain girls’ families and a written plea from the top attorney of the state of Alabama.

The justice of that refusal, given the almost incomprehensible viciousness of the crime, makes absolute moral sense.

The combined lives of the four children destroyed by that bomb lasted a total of 53 years — a quarter-century less than Blanton alone has polluted this planet. His two oldest victims combined didn’t live longer than Blanton spent as a free man between their murders and his indictment for them.

That grim irony was not lost on Diane Robertson Braddock, sister of victim Carole Robertson; Braddock noted that while Blanton has spent most of his life free, “after 15 years [of prison time] we are talking about parole. It is appalling.”

Sarah Collins Rudolph, sister of victim Addie Mae Collins, lost an eye in the bombing and has suffered recurrent bouts of post-traumatic stress.

“We were at that church learning about love and forgiveness,” she said at the parole hearing, “when someone was outside doing hateful things.”

Blanton will next be eligible for a parole hearing in five years. It’s been 53 years since those little girls were murdered. Counting the 15 years he’s served, 53 sounds like a reasonable number, which leaves him just 38 to go. Maybe by age 116 he will have cultivated some remorse. But we’re not counting on it.

This story was originally published August 4, 2016 at 6:14 PM with the headline "Let forgiveness be God’s, not state’s."