Increasingly, Americans no longer agree on what justice and the rule of law mean. This is a very important societal problem, and gee, it would be nice if we had two, or even one, Presidential candidate who could articulate the elements of the crisis well and persuasively enough to make a sufficient proportion of the public aware that this trend must be addressed and reversed.

But we don’t, do we?

The most recent story that brings this into focus comes from Arizona, one of many states with a fracturing, incoherent culture these days. Melody Felicano Johnson, 39, attempted to murder her husband, putting bleach in his coffee at least twice. The woman’s husband, a US airman, began suspecting that something was amiss in March of 2023 when he was stationed in Germany; his wife’s coffee was never very good, but for weeks it had been especially foul.

They were having marital problems and a divorce seemed on the horizon, so he began to suspect that she was trying to poison him so she could collect his money. He decided to install a hidden camera in the kitchen, and sure enough, it caught Melody taking bleach out of a container and adding it to his coffee. The husband then bought some pool water testing strips, and yup. they ndicated high levels of chlorine in his Folger’s. When investigators checked the couple’s Arizona home, they found a container under the bathroom sink with liquid in it that smelled like bleach. The coffee machine also smelled of bleach.

First the wife was charged with attempted first degree murder, but she cut a plea deal, copping to two counts of putting a harmful substance in food or drink. So Pima County Superior Court Judge Javier Chon-Lopez sentenced her to just three years of probation and mandated mental health treatment. His excuse for this absurdly light sentence was that her estranged husband did not want her to go to prison.

Oh. Well if he doesn’t want her punished—notably, he’s not a complete fool: her intended victim at least is in the process of getting that divorce—then it’s perfectly reasonable to have her wandering free among unsuspecting, law abiding people! Right. What if she opens a coffee shop? What if she doesn’t like a co-worker in some workplace environment and has access to the coffee machine?

What message does a such non-punishment send to the public, society and the culture?

The judge’s irresponsible, legally bats sentence follows the recent trend of city, stage and national governments and the legal system regarding justice and the enforcement of laws as endlessly flexible concepts with no clear standards. It is where “restorative justice” leads. It is where the slippery slope of winking away violations of immigration laws because the violators “only want a better life” takes us. It follows the logic of treating shoplifting and other theft as no big deal, because the groups committing most of the crimes are “over-incarcerated.” It is what happens when we applaud rioters who have “good motives” and throw the book at rioters who had “bad” motives. It is the inevitable result of politicizing the legal system, destroying the principles of democracy in order to save it.

Now even attempted premeditated murder is no big deal as long as the victim says, “Let bygones be bygones.”

[Note: the WordPress bot thinks this post is about “coffee.”]