Osler's Razor

This week I went to see the state clemency hearings here in Minnesota. We have a very strange system for granting pardons (and, apparently, no system at all for granting commutations of a sentence).  I watched them with reporter Jennifer Brooks, who writes about them in today's Star Tribune.

It's a compelling theater: petitioners take their turns personally making pleas for a pardon directly to the pardon board, which is composed of the Governor, the Attorney General, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. They answer questions, then listen as the three officials discuss their case and make a decision (which must be unanimous among the three. It's a system with some real problems, but one of them is not transparency. It is all out there in the open: all the tragedies of life, the worst choices, and also the healing and growth that sometimes follows.  Many of them told stories of addiction of recovery, a narrative shared by the governor himself.

Governor Dayton, about to leave office, has been in the hospital for a long stretch, and this seems to have delayed the hearings until this late date (usually they are in early fall).  He is not an extroverted man, and was quieter that usual in these hearings. One result of that was that when the petitioners were done describing their lives--the good and the bad--it was often followed by a long silence. No one was sure what was supposed to happen next, it seemed. It went on, it seemed, for minutes at a time: the whole room, silent, awkward.

And yet, in those long silences there was something solemn and holy.  They stayed with me long after I left. After someone has poured out their heart, hoping for the forgiveness of society, perhaps the best immediate response of all was that long holy and contemplative quiet, reflecting the weight of the moment.