Veering Toward Righteous Behavior

For all I know, the man accused of killing Jersey Diane Bridgeman is innocent. We’ll see soon enough.

Somebody killed her, though. Somebody killed a girl who, according to her grandparents, “lit up the room” when she walked in.

Now we’ve all been awfully reminded: Even a child in her own home isn’t safe.

This could have happened to anyone, even in Bentonville, which has one of the lowest crime rates of any city its size in the nation.

This child lived six years and six days. Her murder is as wrong as a thing can be wrong.

Soon enough, we’ll all talk about what we ought to do to keep kids safe. We’ll have the usual debate about what a community can and cannot do. This is fine and good.

We should talk. Right now, though, all I’m going to do is go home, hug my kids and be glad they’re there.

There’s one thing the community can do: Give the accused a fair trial. Insults and angry remarks won’t accomplish a thing. The prospect of sober, thoughtful justice is the best chance we have. Determination for justice will comfort the innocent and the bereaved, weigh upon the guilty and bring credit to us all.

Somebody needs to thank Bentonville Police, the state Crime Lab and other authorities for handling a situation prone to publicpanic. I wish I could fully commend them for a job well done, but I can’t until we get a verdict. I fully expect this criminal case will proceed well. Assuming it does, I won’t forget to give the police my share of all the thanks they’re due. For now, it’s as far as I can go to say they acted swiftly. They walked a tight line between the public’s right to know what’s going on and the demands of both justice and good police work. They resisted the immense pressure these cases exert to jump to conclusions and make an arrest just for the sake of making one.

The search for the killer didn’t turn into a public witch-hunt. That didn’t happen by itself. It was wise for Police Chief Jon Simpson to let people know Friday “there is no reason for public alarm,” for instance.

There’s nothing to be gained by hounding or harassing the accused or his family. Justice is best. That’s why it’s called justice.

I wondered aloud after the arrest whether the accused could get a fair trial in Benton County. Every day thatgoes by convinces me more he can. The community’s reaction has been one of sympathy for the victim’s family and a notable lack of clamor for shortcuts to giving the accused a fair hearing.

This is a good trend.

I’m sorry but not surprised somebody in the Benton County Jail hit the accused. I was encouraged to see jail administrators act swiftly to make sure nothing like that happens again.

Nothing can make the death of Jersey Bridgeman right. The best we can hope for is for us, as a community, to be righteous. “Righteous” is a word that’s been on my mind lately. All my life, I’ve heard that word pronounced “right-tous,” and I grew up in the Church of Christ. I heard that word a lot. In the movie “Lincoln,” though, I heard the actor portraying the president pronounce the word as “righty-ous.” This was an archaic but accurate pronunciation of how the word used to be said. I don’t question Daniel Day-Lewis’s research on any character he portrays.

When I hear the word righteous most days, I tended to associate it with being self-righteous or with righteous indignation. I cover politics after all. Today, after this tragic death, I’m left reflecting upon what the word really means. Itreally means to be just, to constantly try to make things right.

In crude terms, it is to veer toward the right, and not in the political sense. It’s not a condition met or state achieved. It’s a striving. To be righteous, you have to do something. All in all, “righty-ous” is probably the pronunciation that gives a better sense of the word’s real meaning.

There would be no need to seek justice in a perfect world. Justice would be the natural condition. All we cando is steer toward the right.

Justice must be sought with dedication to even get close.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see theright, let us strive on to fi nish the work we are in.” That’s good advice anytime.

DOUG THOMPSON IS A POLITICAL REPORTER AND COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.