Unexpected heartache

Child’s family faces possibility of killer’s parole

It’s been said America is a place of second chances. Forgiveness for wrongs committed or failures endured is a common, even admirable philosophy that gives many who choose to take advantage of it the opportunity to make amends.

For the purposes of this editorial, we’ll leave aside the concept of spiritual and personal forgiveness for the moment, and address only the role of the state in a civilized society. In that context, some wrongs don’t deserve second chances. Some crimes are too brutal, too heinous, too cruel to allow for consideration of mitigating factors or the potential for a slate wiped clean by time and repentance.

The murder of 4-year-old Barbara Thompson is one of those crimes.

In 1986, Barbara was lured into a field in Fayetteville by a 15-yearold neighbor named Christopher Segerstrom. He told her they were going to catch butterflies. Instead, he raped her and beat her to death with a rock.

His guilt never in doubt, Segerstrom was convicted of the crimes a year later and sentenced as an adult to life in prison without the possibility of parole. This despite the defense’s argument that Segerstrom was a troubled boy unfit for a criminal trial. Barbara’s family, heartbroken by the senseless death of an innocent child, at least had the comfort of knowing that her killer would live the rest of his life behind bars.

Now, even that comfort is gone and her survivors must contemplate the possibility, however unlikely, that Segerstrom may one day be free.

Last month, Segerstrom was resentenced in Washington County Circuit Court to life in prison, but with the possibility of parole. The judge who imposed the sentence, Mark Lindsay, had no choice: Appeals courts determined that convicts who were juveniles at the time of their crimes can’t be sentenced to life without the possibility for parole. Those rulings retroactively nullified Segerstrom’s original sentence and forced Lindsay’s hand.

The rulings indicated that people so young ought not to be deprived of even the smallest chance to show appropriate remorse and earn a second chance outside prison walls.

Now, the odds that any parole board would actually release someone with Segerstrom’s record, both before and after his conviction, are extremely remote. Washington County prosecutors and Barbara’s survivors told this newspaper for a story last week that they are committed to fight Segerstrom’s release each and every time it comes up before the board. It is difficult to imagine he’d ever walk out of prison, despite his newly bestowed eligibility for parole.

But even the smallest chance he’d be set free sends chills down the spine of anyone familiar with the case, especially Barbara’s traumatized and still-grieving family.

“I can’t stand the thought of people knowing what he did to her,” Barbara’s mother, Jena Muddiman, told our reporter. “If people did know what he did, then they’d know why I want to keep him in there so bad.”

“They make it so much about the killers, their civil rights are being violated,” said Connie Harris, Barbara’s uncle. “They’re not facing what we’re facing.”

And that’s regular reminders, every time Segerstrom comes up for parole, of what happened to Barbara and the fear that her killer might, just might, walk away.

“It’s still confusing because this is a family that was told 30 years ago that this guy was never, ever going to get out again,” said Washington County Prosecutor Matt Durrett. “It’s a lot of confusion, a lot of emotion.”

It’s confusion and emotion that victims of a tragedy should not have to endure. We share that frustration and anger, though one cannot fathom the depth of the family’s pain.

The best result going forward is for Arkansas Parole Board members to dispense with their duties quickly and efficiently, and for Arkansas citizens to be scrupulously cognizant of the board’s dealings, particularly if and when it takes up the matter of parole for Christopher Segerstrom.

Not everyone deserves a second chance.