Dr. Young Kun Kim.
The tragic story of a professor killed in a robbery ended with a unique resolution last week.
Dr. Young Kun Kim of Lehman College was killed last December after being pushed during a robbery at an ATM machine on Broadway between 96th and 97th Streets. The assailant, 52-year-old Michael Lee, was arrested and initially charged with murder. But Kim’s case took a different turn when an assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran approached Kim’s family about trying for a different outcome.
Yoran contacted the professor’s son, Jinsoo Kim, to see if he would be interested in pursuing “restorative justice” instead of a traditional prosecution, Gothamist reported.
“The decision was not immediate,” Jinsoo Kim told Gothamist. But he was a new father. “We were raising a sweet, joyful innocent daughter, and anger had no place in any of that.”
Kim also knew what his father would want – a man devoted to teaching the value of human rights and compassion, who planned to write a book “about the small happinesses in life, and how they are important, yet often overlooked,” he said.
Kim and his wife met with Lee and Lee’s sister for an hour and a half, and came to understand his background, and the desperation he felt that led to his awful decision to rob and push Kim. As part of the process, Lee pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a 10-year-sentence. The courtroom scene on Friday was unique.
“What followed was an unusual scene: the victim’s family took the hand of the perpetrator’s sister, and they walked across the courtroom together,” according tot Gothamist. The DA’s office is looking to expand the restorative justice program next year.
This article fails to explain what restorative justice means in this case. All I know is that he was still convicted for ten years. What else?
Agreed.
This is extraordinary.
Wow, very moving.
Yeahhhh no. Would never do this. Fear of being stuck in a concrete building for the rest of one’s life for taking the life of another is a good thing to keep the rest of us safe from desperate circumstances. Intentional or not, this man was assaulted and then died. It’s not an “I fell asleep behind the wheel and ran over someone” accident. This was an extremely poor decision by the prosecution and opens up another option for the perpetrator where it should not exist.
As Sid points out, this article doesn’t explain what restorative justice means in this context. How can you be so sure that it doesn’t have deterrent value? Also, is there no room for progress beyond a system of incarceration that is now at least more than a hundred years old? Would you be satisfied if we treated disease the same way we did at the turn of the twentieth century?
Locking people in cages in a concrete building is a bad solution for violence and other forms of wrongdoing. There are better deterrents—more effective and less cruel ways of dealing with misbehavior. Restorative justice isn’t perfect, but it is progress.
I was touched that Dr. Kim’s family believed he would have wanted them to forgive. The world needs more people like them. May his memory be a blessing.
Good on the Kim family I say! But personally I’d rather the violent criminal be put behind bars than having a reduced sentence for whatever reason. Because ‘fallen on hard times’ should not be a literal ‘get out of jail free’ card.