Just read this on an American drivers’ site, and frankly was amazed at the responses:
Are there any companies that will hire me with a murder conviction I have from 1994? I was a juvenile when I caught the charge. ( Gang related shooting)
I’ve been out of prison since 2007 & off parole since 2010. I haven’t had any problems with the law or caught any new cases.
I’ve put in applications to over 350 companies. I’m coming on the forum asking for assistance in the hopes that someone has been through something similar or know someone who has.
I’ve tried all the starter companies Swift, western express, Crst, Covenant, NfI, etc all the major & mid major companies. Thanks in advance
2 pages in response, all very sympathetic and supportive with several links to companies and organisations who could help.
I wonder how something similar would be viewed here.
I guess it depends whether you think he can be rehabillitated and atone for his crime - if the crime was 1994 and he was let out in 2007 then I assume he was, indeed, tried as a juvenile as otherwise it was a pretty short sentence.
But an interesting question nonetheless - I think I’d want to know a lot more about the circumstances and his subsequent progress in the justice system. Did he clean up his act, or just learn to be better at killing people while inside?
My guess would be that if he does not find honest work he will wind up back in the gang world, does he deserve a 2nd chance?
Details matter here. If young at the time and poorI imagine it is quite easy to slide down that slope. If he is determined he should be able to crawl back up, but hard. Easier if he can find a mentoring organisation to help.
There does need to be additional information before one can decide whether he’s just looking for cover or wants to have a normal life. If one is condemned to become a pariah for the rest of your life after killing then you may as well execute and have done. If rehabilitation is possible then that needs to be explored.
I agree mostly with all the last 3 posts, and have said as much on the UK drivers’ forum where the opinion is more cautious than that and definitely at odds with 100 % of the posts on the US drivers’ forum.
One thing that has come to light this morning is that he would be banned from crossing the border into Canada and, while there is ample work for a driver in the ‘contiguous 48’, it could be a problem for him as he lives in Illinois and might be difficult to find a company which never goes north.
Although I have posted in the UK forum I have kept my opinions to myself in the US one as the man himself is posting there and everybody has been so supportive while I would seek more information. As I assume that others here do not know that site I should point out that I have never seen such unity of opinion in sympathy before there, it is a very rough and ready community with people not holding back on contradictory and insulting posts.
A key, and interesting part of my last job was advising decision makers in a Big 4 accountancy firm whether X or Y was suitable or not as a client. Both individuals and companies. Although I didn’t come across many murderers, there were cases of very close associations with torturers, human rights abusers, mercy killers (husband helping very ill wife wife to die) several people in prison, illegal arms traffickers, ruling families looting state assets on a massive scale etc, ex-members of the Stasi, Russian oligarchs who had probably had competitors liquidated etc.
The general rule of thumb was to be favourably inclined to those who had paid society’s price for their crimes eg had served their sentences, paid their fines, had repented of their sins (so far as could be determined) and showed no signs of reverting to criminal behaviour. Above all, given this was a professional services organisation representing clients with tax authorities worldwide, we had to be as sure as possible that the potential clients would be entirely truthful to us, and to the authorities…
Perhaps it’s also worth noting that under the doctrine of “joint enterprise” you can be convicted of murder even if you didn’t actually pull the trigger or wield the knife - there was the famous case over here of Derek Bentley (who was an illiterate, epileptic young adult with developmental disabilities), who was hanged for murder in 1953 even though he didn’t shoot the victim himself.
Yes, that was an outrageous case, wasn’t the actual murderer later reprieved, or am I confusing it with something else? It all rested on the court’s interpretation of Bentley’s words to the shooter ‘let him have it’ and whether it meant ‘give him the gun’ (to the policeman who was demanding it), or ‘kill him’. The jury thought the latter.
I don’t know if they have such a thing in the States though as joint enterprise.
Edit: The shooter was Christopher Craig who served 10 years because, at 16, he was too young to hang.
No doubt it was a stitch up. Bent rozzers and posh judges, the ruling class way in goodness how many cases. Justice in tn England was IMO a well crafted myth, a lottery, as Timothy Evans might testify.
Later they would have topped the Birmingham six and the Guildford four if they could have. Lord Denning. who threw out a civil action that the six had brought against West Midlands Police, describing the potential revelation of police perjury and violence as “such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further.’” If the six had been hanged, he later said, “we shouldn’t have all these campaigns to get them released”. No shit Sherlock
Think of how many other innocents may have been murdered in the name of justice. I think it was all about control and giving the masses a false sense of security. We’re looking out for you.
I generally wouldn’t assume the senior police officers (apart from Maigret and Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby) are politically clean as a whistle. Look at the Met for goodness sakes. If I hear “lessons learned” again I’ll scream.
They, and the other police forces around the UK are, due to inadequate funding, direction and prioritisation increasingly too busy to respond to real people’s problems, burglary, domestic violence etc. but then can turn out in force to beat up peaceful demonstrators.
I have a friend whose ribs were recently broken by the Dutch police during a peaceful Extinction Rebellion demo in Amsterdam. He’s a retired advertising exec, wealthy and savvy, but also very committed and he’s currently suing the police.
Initially the police couldn’t find an appointment slot for him to register his complaint, but eventually through sheer persistence and phoning round he got one and was able to give his statement. But when the statement was read back to him, they’d omitted the policeman’s words, “And now the other side.” as he broke both sets of ribs by kneeling on him…
My friend doesn’t need the financial compensation and he’s going to distribute it amongst the volunteer workers who’ve been researching his case.
Beyond rebellious youth, most of us want to trust the police, but so often, in so many otherwise fairly ‘normal’ democracies they appear to be letting us down.
It seems to be normal human nature that those given authority will sometimes abuse it or believe it gives them a right to do things that would ordinarily be unthinkable. John S and others have frequently cited abuse by clergy in RC schools, we see it with police and prison authorities, teachers, politicians, sports coaches, all kinds of people. It may also be that positions of authority have a draw for the kinds of individuals that are inclined to do this.
I hope your friend is successful and the policeman concerned is prosecuted, rather than protected.
And those of us who live in France are not so myopic that we don’t take notice of what is happening in the rest of the world and being of enquiring minds with differing points of view we enrich each other’s experience and stimulate the grey cells by raising topics and issues that may be of interest to others.
Sigh, another one, if you can’t see the connection between the title and France, where murders do occur and murderers are sometimes released to work as responsible citizens, then I would suggest you have found the wrong forum for you.
Out of the 10 most recent threads I have been involved in 7 are relevant in some way or other to France, and the other 3 are relevant to anyone with a conscience and an interest in the wider world.
Many thanks for the replies to what I thought was a reasonable question. My respect goes to JaneJones, whose suggestion that “I can always scroll on by” I find the most apt response. I failed in doing this though, perhaps to my detriment. Having been obliquely accused of being “myopic” and mysteriously but directly accused of being “another one” (another what?), I will bow out of the site as indeed it is clearly not for me. I wish you all well in your debate. Feel free to refer to the community guidelines btw.
