The costs and complications of justice
The family of Cory James Protos described the beatings and strangulation that killed him in 2014 as a ‘‘prolonged, violent atrocity’’ and as you read the details of the Protos case, it is hard to disagree with that impression.
His former girlfriend, Zariah Jae Samson, admitted to beating and strangling Protos at two different Christchurch addresses over the course of six hours. She was only 22 at the time. It is a depressing story about drugs, paranoia, violent propensities, criminal culture and bystanders who seemed unwilling or unable to intervene.
Rather than being convicted of murder, Samson pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter more than three years after Protos was killed. She was jailed in 2017 for six years and three months.
There were two obvious frustrations for the family. One is that justice took so long. The second is that Samson was ultimately charged with manslaughter, not murder.
At the Christchurch High Court in 2017, Protos’ father spoke of experiencing a ‘‘life sentence of nightmares, pain and grief’’ while Samson benefited from ‘‘an unprecedented loophole in the system’’. To add to the shock, Protos’ parents said they learned of their son’s death through Facebook.
But the implications of the Protos case extend far beyond a disappointed and grieving family. The case also illustrates a dilemma and raises important questions that go straight to the heart of our ideas of justice. What is justice? Who benefits from it? And what are its costs?
Just before a trial that was due to start in 2015, only a year after the killing, Samson’s lawyer asked police for the identity of informants in the case. The police resisted, partly to protect informants who had been told their dealings with police were confidential.
Instead of pursuing a murder conviction, and risking the exposure of informants’ identities, police agreed instead to a lesser charge of manslaughter, to which Samson pleaded guilty.
The result would not have sat well with many but it is easy to understand the police’s position. Their options were limited. They needed to honour the commitments made to informants they depend on.
Police will have weighed up the possibilities and decided that a guilty plea to a manslaughter charge was better than nothing, if informants had not stood up to scrutiny. The public would agree with that.
But it is also clear that a family feels short changed and like many families who find themselves in such a position, they have campaigned for tougher sentences. While this is not necessarily a solution, there are times when justice feels unsatisfactory.