Worst Thing Ever

Steve Silver calls it the “worst thing ever” and we can’t disagree. A young mother returned to the homeless shelter where she was staying after a night of drinking. After retrieving her baby from a sitter, she went to sleep with the baby and sometime later, vomited into a bucket of cleaning solution near her bed. At some point later, the baby fell off the bed and drowned in the bucket of vomit. The New York Times reports:

“It sounds like a tragic accident,” said Judge Alexander Jeong, as Ms. DeJesus sat before him, her face buried in her hands. But, the judge added, “there was some responsibility.”

Our reaction to this surprises even us. Though we are usually all in favor of harsh punishment, we wonder what purpose it serves here. The mother was clearly negligent, but can any punishment hold a candle to the pain she must already feel? In such a horrific case, it’s easy to demand a pound of flesh, but the harder choice, compassion, would appear to be the more proper course.