I've directed my readers to Adir Waldman's fine book Arbitrating Armed Conflict before.  Now that there is pitched battle in the Middle East with significant civilian casualties, I once again recommend Adir's book to anyone who wishes to look beyond taking sides. 

The following summary is from Juris Publishing where the book remains available for purchase. 

In Arbitrating Armed Conflict Adir Waldman examines a previously unstudied, yet critically important, experiment in international law.

In April of 1996, Israel and Lebanon reached an extraordinary written Agreement: armed conflict between the Israel Defense Forces and the Lebanese terrorist militia Hesbollah would continue, but both forces would be bound to an explicitly agreed upon set of rules intended to protect civilians.

To support this unique international pact, the parties established an equally unique arbitral institution—the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group—to hear and resolve complaints regarding breaches of the Agreement.

Through a series of confidential interviews with highly informed participants, Mr. Waldman casts the first light on this exceptional system of international and military law. In addition, this volume presents a complete collection of decisions rendered by the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group, a true gold mine of previously unpublished material, as well as a highly confidential internal memorandum obtained by the author. In a day and age of seemingly unbounded conflict, the lessons of this system, with both its pitfalls and its virtues, will prove crucial, and this book an indispensable guidebook to that system.

Accessible to the lay reader, this book is sure to be of interest to a wide audience — scholars, practitioners of international and military law, students of political science and foreign relations, observers of the Middle East and the wider public in general.

Now more than ever the international community should consider potential solutions to the Orwellian term "collateral damage" as a product of  inevitable border wars, solutions that will, at a minimum, make an effort to protect the innocent.

I'd stop flogging this dead horse if I didn't have to weekly convince litigants of their own enduring human tendency to prefer relative well-being over absolute material possessions.

This week, that "news" is brought to you by the New York Times to explain why a surprising number of us have not been made terribly unhappy as our financial fortunes decline.  As Op-Ed contributor Sonja Lyubomirsky (of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want) observes today:

the economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick demonstrated in a study at Harvard, many people would prefer to receive an annual salary of $50,000 when others are making $25,000 than to earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000.

Why? Because we "care more about social comparison, status and rank than about the absolute value of our bank accounts or reputations."  In other words, we're more concerned with justice (fairness) than we are about the money.  Which is why our clients have sought out our help with their personal, financial and commercial problems -- because we're in the justice business.  When we understand this, the negotiation of financial settlements becomes a whole lot easier because there are many more ways to deliver justice than by throwing money at it.  

Read the full (short) article Why We’re Still Happy here.

Check out Liz Straus' 25 Traits of Twitter Folks I Admire and 25 Folks Who Have Them.  These "traits" are in fact disciplines.  Achieving them on a consistent basis is work but work worth doing.  Use them to guide your way in the new year and your conflicts with your fellows will decrease and your fortunes rise!  Thanks Liz!  Click on the link above for the Twitter "Folks" who have these traits and follow them.

1. don’t seek to be the center of any universe.

2. find great conversations and get to know the people there.

3. realize that every venue has it’s own culture and rules.

4. do their own talking and their own listening.

5. talk mostly about the accomplishments of others.

6. ask intriguing questions that invite others to join the conversation.

7. don’t worry when folks don’t respond to something they say.

8. have time for new friends, talk to them, listen to them, read their sites and bios, ask them questions — avoid assumptions.

9. have a different conversation with every individual and every business.

10. take embarrassing or private conversations offline.

11. are inclusive and encourage folks who exclude people to exclude themselves.

12. shout out good news, help in emergencies, and celebrate with everyone.

13. say please, thank you, and you’re welcome, and mean them.

14. are incredibly curious about what works, what doesn’t work, seek feedback often, and look to improve what they do.

15. study the industry and trends, watch how things occur, share information about those freely, but never break a trust.

16. offer advice when people ask. Help whenever they can.

17. aren’t “shameless.” Ask for help in ways that folks are proud to pitch in.

18. are constantly connecting people and ideas in business conversations that are helpful, not hypeful.

19. get paid to strategize business, build tactical plans, but won’t “monetize” relationships.

20. ignore the trolls.

21. keep their promises.

22. can be transparent without being naked … most of us look and behave best in public with our clothes ON.

23. listen to the hive mind, but think their own thoughts.

24. send back channel “hellos” to friends when there’s no time to talk.

25. understand that the Internet is public and has no eraser.

The relationships with people — social in social media — is what is changing things. It makes a business experience worth looking forward to and turns a transaction into a relationship. It’s different online because I can’t see you. When I meet folks who make that distance and darkness disappear, I respect and admire them.

From E-discovery implications of Twitter at Lawyers USA

The social networking site Twitter.com allows users just 140 characters to describe what the user is up to – a post known as a "tweet."

But lawyers advising clients on e-discovery or using Twitter themselves need to realize that tweets are discoverable.

"Twitter posts are like any other electronically stored information," explained Douglas E. Winter, a partner at Bryan Cave in Washington, D.C. and head of the firm's Electronic Discovery unit. "They are discoverable and should therefore be approached with all appropriate caution."The increasing popularity of Twitter has made electronic discovery even more complicated.

Litigators!  Remember, you and your opponent(s) have a choice. It's not only in arbitration that you can make your own law, but by way of stipulated case management orders cooperatively crafted with an eye toward relative cost and likely benefit (ask me for a template!)

I don't need to tell you that clients are cutting back in 2009.  The litigation practice that thrives will be the most efficient and effective dispute resolution vehicle on the road.

And now, for your moment of zen - Charlie Dickens.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke in the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out of it. Every Chancellor was "in it," for somebody or other, when he was counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port- wine committee after dinner in hall. Articled clerks have been in the habit of fleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor handled it neatly, when, correcting Mr. Blowers, the eminent silk gown who said that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he observed, "or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr. Blowers"--a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and purses.

How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks' Office who has copied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that eternal heading, no man's nature has been made better by it. In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good. The very solicitors' boys who have kept the wretched suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle, Mizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into themselves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle, Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter and see what can be done for Drizzle--who was not well used--when Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and sharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some off-hand manner never meant to go right.

Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

The National Law Journal's annoying practice of making its "best" content available only with a secret decoder ring forged in the fire of subscription dollars, nevertheless did not stop me from access to an intriguing article about arbitration's "e-discovery conundrum" (here for people with the secret code).

In Arbitration's e-Discovery Conundrum (thank you Mr. Thrifty for the copy) the author contends that:

. . . as litigation discovery techniques have become more prevalent in arbitration, arbitration has become just as time-consuming, expensive and burdensome. Without the benefit of an appeal process for the losing party, the primary remaining benefit for binding arbitration -- privacy -- is often outweighed by the other negative factors.

Parties and their litigation counsel have pointed to runaway discovery as one major reason why they have abandoned arbitration in favor of mediation in the United States and even internationally.

So how can "the long-recognized benefits of arbitration -- speed and cost savings -- be restored?"

(top:  is this what any of us went to law school for? Flowchart from Integreon)

The author recommends that the process must "address the needs and interests that led them to arbitration in the first place: to balance the need to discover those documents reasonably necessary for a party to prove its case with the cost, burden and time involved in producing such documents, while taking into account the need for fundamental fairness and to avoid surprise and trial by ambush."

Here's where reformers fail to get the direction the law is moving in.  It's not about finding a process that fits your needs - it's about creating the process that is tailor-made for your one and only completely unique and unrepeatable dispute.

The beauty of arbitration is not what it is.  It is what it can be.  The beauty of arbitration is that it allows you to make up your own $%#@^ law and procedure.  It restores control of the process to you.

What, you say?  Your opponent and you can't agree?  This is no longer a good enough reason, particularly because I do not see many attorneys making the effort to craft discovery and case management plans that reasonably addresses the parties' actual need for every document that someone marginally involved in the dispute might have once breathed upon.

I know whereof I speak.

The solution?  Sit down, for goodness sake, with your adversary, for as many days as it takes, to reach agreement about what each side actually needs.  Leave your huffing and your puffing, your posturing and your adversarial chops at the conference room door.  There will be plenty of time for all of that after the only people who actually understand the dispute -- YOU -- agree upon the type of process necessary to resolve it as efficiently and effectively as possible.

The law firms that do this will survive the recession. 

As I head out to mediate an alleged Ponzi scheme purportedly perpetrated by one member of the Adath Israel Shul/* against another, I ponder its similarity to many other allegedly fraudulent financial schemes I've personally mediated.  Then I pick up the morning New York Times where, three thousand miles away, "at Green's Pharmacy, a popular lunch counter in downtown Palm Beach

a man who said two of his relatives were founding members of the [Palm Beach] country club wondered aloud whether the club’s unusually exclusive nature, especially among the wealthiest investors, is what enabled [Bernard L. Madoff's] suspected scheme to go on so long.

“Anyone can get robbed,” the author of a tell-all about the country club, Madness Under the Royal Palms told New York Times reporter Ian Urbina. “Madoff’s scam was so much worse because he was one of their own.”

Whether he's working the Shul, your local evangelical brethren or the elite of Palm Beach, the con man's stock in trade is contained in his name -- "con" for confidence.

We don't get robbed for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions when someone jumps out of the bushes and demands our watches and jewerly.  No.  To get robbed on a massive scale requires trust and confidence in an authoritative figure who - gasp - is one of us.

He doesn't look like the guy pictured above.  Depending upon who is mark is, he looks like this (right, Bernard Madoff).

 or like this (left, anon at Wailing Wall)

or like this.  (right, Ted Haggard formerly of the New Life Church)

As Albert Brooks said to Holly Hunter in 1987's masterpiece Broadcast News,

What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women.

Of the six rules of influence Madoff played on all of them.

Reciprocation: Reciprocation is about how, if you do something for somebody, they will feel obliged to do something for you, or they will at least feel better about doing something for you. 

Commitment and consistency: People respond to others who are consistent in their messages. If you are constantly giving the same messages to people and acting in a consistent way, they will respond positively. 

Social proof: If people see others doing something, they assume that it must be okay to do it and therefore, they will be happier about doing it themselves.

Liking:  People respond much more readily to people that they like, and even to the friends of people that they like. They feel comfortable if they see similarity or like the things that you’re associated with. 

Authority: People invariably act more positively if they have respect for the authority of the person who is giving them information. 

Scarcity: People get so much more interested in something if they feel that it’s about to run out.

 from Mind Power Marketing here.

Con men do what we do; pretend to hold the same values we do; go to "our" "club"; attend "our"  social events; give to "our" charities; and, and look like "us."

For another view of this same story -- including the fact that Madoff's suspicious activities were  reported to the SEC in 1999, see Jeff Matthews is Not Making This Up here.

Tips to the con-man wary will follow.

And did I say this is my 1,000th post.  I couldn't think of anything to do to celebrate it other than to just keep on keepin' on. 

_______________

*/  All names, places and some circumstances of the mediated case changed to maintain confidentiality.

By Greg Katz

Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - The crowded Los Angeles mediation market is about to get a new competitor.

Professional Mediation will open its doors in January. It is the brainchild of Cary Sarnoff, president of Sarnoff Information Technologies, whose main enterprise is Sarnoff Court Reporters.

Among the company's first signees is Jeff Kichaven, who is leaving JAMS for the new provider after two years with the dispute resolution giant. He said that although he has enjoyed his time with JAMS, he had tired of the large company's bureaucracy and was feeling "entrepreneurial."

"The new company will be shared with a very small number of mediators, all very skilled," Kichaven said.

Sarnoff billed Professional Mediation as a high-end dispute resolution boutique. Unlike some large panels, he said, it will have no more than 25 or 30 panelists.

By comparison, JAMS has 262 neutrals nationwide, including 133 in California alone.

"We don't want to be the biggest - we simply want to be the best," Sarnoff said. "I think that we can create an environment where very well-respected and well-thought-of mediators can collaborate together."

Sarnoff said he decided to open a mediation shop after his children, who are lawyers, began using mediators more frequently. The new panel has been in the works for several months, he said.

Professional Mediation will be a subsidiary of Sarnoff Information Technologies, he said. It will operate out of that company's five existing offices in California and Nevada, as well as a forthcoming office in Century City. Its downtown Los Angeles office shares a floor with JAMS.

Besides Kichaven, the panel also will include Los Angeles mediator Deborah Rothman, who said she will continue to work with the other providers she has been with recently.

Independent San Diego-based mediator Scott Markus, who was affiliated with JAMS in the 1990s, and Irvine mediator John McCauley, also said they plan to sign on.

To continue reading, click here.

From this coming Monday's Forum Column in the Los Angeles Daily Journal (byline V. Pynchon):

 

Psychologists tell us that we are not only "meaning making" beings, but that we are all born conspiracy theorists. Viewing a field of nonsensical, unrelated data, we naturally begin to "connect the dots" - to organize the information into a coherent, and often compelling, narrative.

Pattern making or conspiracy theorizing is a human survival mechanism. We have never been the fastest or the biggest creatures on the planet. We don't have the sharpest teeth or blend in all that well with the scenery. Our soft, easily punctured skin is not covered with a protective shell. In a pinch, we can't take a running leap and fly away from land-bound carnivores who might make us their prey.

We are, however, the canniest creatures on the planet. To avoid the tiger who made lunch of our best comrade, we surveyed the scene and committed the pattern of otherwise unrelated details to memory. Five banyan trees, a narrow stream, and, a pile of rubble left by a recent avalanche means "there are tigers here."

Couple this with Fundamental Attribution Error and you have all of the ingredients necessary to blame inadvertently caused harm on elaborate conspiracies cooked up by our untrustworthy companions - Fundamental Attribution Error being our universal tendency to over-emphasize the role of others' negative personality traits to explain why harm befell us.

So it is with our legal adversaries. Once the channels of communication have been severed by the filing of a lawsuit, attorneys and clients alike begin to make up "what really happened" based on predispositions, scattered conversations, faulty memories and scraps of documentation.

 

Continue reading Monday's Daily Journal Forum Column here.

Thanks LACBA for the daily case reports!

Trial court lacked authority to review discretionary, prehearing order by arbitrator, who imposed stay on arbitration of dispute concerning uninsured motorist policy until plaintiff--who was driving on work-related business in company car provided by employer when rear ended--pursued workers’ compensation benefits in light of Insurance Code Sec. 11580.2.

Briggs v. Resolution Remedies

Friend and colleague Los Angeles attorney-mediator Linda Bulmash of ADR Services, Inc. advises  us to be consistent in negotiating the resolution of litigation in this month's LACBA negotiation tip.

The Power of Consistency in Negotiation and Mediation
 
When a person makes a public commitment to a course of behavior, the human psyche will push them to follow through with their commitment. For instance we break New Years resolutions because we seldom share them with others and usually do not write them down.

An interesting phenomenon occurs when the commitment is made public or a person pro-actively takes the first step to follow through with a course of action. An interesting research study found that although people are often unsure of their choice of the winning horse at a racetrack, they become much more confident of their choice once they place their bet. They are driven to consistency once they make a public commitment to a course of action.

Therefore experienced negotiators and mediators focus on getting people to publicly verbalize and/or write down each small commitment to follow a certain course of action (e.g. buy a car or resolve a dispute) knowing that once done publicly, it is highly likely that they will believe this is the best choice and will find a way to attain the object of their commitment.

Thanks, as always, for the great advice Linda!  And if you're looking for a local neutral, check out Lucie Baron's dynamite list of L.A. mediators here!

We are in this together. Remember. The bottom supports the middle and the middle supports the top. The current economy is Exhibit A.

Link to L.A. Times story (more in-depth analysis) here.

If your side of the boat sinks, my does too.

This segment of my interview with Vicki Flaughter is primarily about why women don't negotiate - to their substantial economic detriment - (see Women Don't Ask Here) and what they can do about it.

No, I did not make the ABA's Blawg 100 this year, but my good online buddy, the brilliant and energetic Susan Cartier Liebel of Build a Solo Practice and Solo Practice University did.  Here's just one of the many reasons Susan has the following she does.  She's ridiculously generous.  Rather than resting on her Blawg 100 laurels, she asks her blogfriends to come along for the ride.   After posting her own Top 10 (in which Susan kindly included Settle It Now) she challenged the rest of us to

create a list of recommendations of those blogs you believe others should learn about and publicize on your own blog.  Let's take the idea behind the ABA 100 and expand it.  Let's make December of every year the month we introduce our readers to new blogs of note. Let's give everyone who blogs for education or love of writing and who does so with consistency and quality a pat on the back for a job well done. 

Here's Susan's list:

Jordan Furlong - Law21 Chuck Newton - Third Wave Blog  Marc Randazza - The Legal Satyricon Blog  Enrico Schaefer - The Greatest American Lawyer Grants Griffths - Home Office Lawyer, Home Office Warrior and Blog for Profit A Public Defender PTLawMom Carolyn Elefant - MyShingle  Stephanie West Allen - IdealawgDawn Elaine Bowie - Maryland Father's Rights 

And here is my own:

Blawg Review, which every week delivers to your virtual doorstep the best posts in the legal blogosphere.  BlawgReview is edited by (the currently D-pressed D-listed) anonymous Ed. whose wit and perspicacity has made Blawg Review the place for Blawg-gregation. This year, you'll see that nearly a quarter of the 100 Top ABA Blawgs hosted Blawg Review.   The test of a great blog is not how it powers itself, but how it empowers its readers.  That's why I'm giving Blawg Review the No. 1 spot in my own top 10 list here. (like the nice little gold statue, Ed?  - "Oh my goodness, it's heavy!")

My new favorite ADR Blog Settlement Perspectives offers unparalleled "street" advice about how to do best that which every litigator will do most -- settle the darn thing!  Written by the delightful and charming John DeGroote, Chief Litigation Counsel since 2000 for BearingPoint, Inc., f/k/a KPMG Consulting, Inc., Settlement Perspectives routinely hits the post out of Blawg Park.  If  you aren't now subscribed to it, take my advice and hit the RSS feed RIGHT NOW!

I am a huge Adam's Drafting fan because I spent the vast majority of my litigation career parsing the difference between words like "sudden" and "quick" and because my first legal research assignment back in 1976 was to inform the senior litigation partner at the unlamented Arthur, Dry & Kalish what the word "all" meant. So I can't help but get a little thrill out of posts with titles like -  Enumerated Clauses - When the Trunk is Too Short for the Branch.  If Ken Adams had his way, there wouldn't be a single commercial litigator working today on any case requiring my skills -- contract interpretation and application.  Damn you, Ken Adams!  If you remember how to diagram a sentence, Adam's Drafting is your new best friend.  

In collaboration with Jeffrey M Schwartz, M.D., Stephanie West Allen (one of my "Human Factor" co-columnists at The Complete Lawyer) brings the science of the brain together with the work of the law in Brains on Purpose.  How could you skip a post with a title like Jell-O without whipped cream?  Rhumba without rhythm?  A joke without a punch line?  Mediation without metaphor?  The M.D. after Schwartz's name and J.D. after Stephanie's means this is the real deal and not some new age misapplication of science to law.  Cutting edge.  Enough said.

For the fashionista IP lawyer, there is Counterfeit Chic, a model of legal style, wit, grace, and depth of analysis.  Smart and fun, CC is written by the brilliant, eclectic and ridiculously accomplished Law Professor Susan Scafidi whose interest in fashion came out of the closet before I knew what "RSS feed" meant.  And don't miss the must-read IP book of the 21st century, Professor Scafidi's Who Owns Culture.

My final five are the blogs that keep me working, thinking and sometimes eating -- mediator blah blah (laughing) the Mediation Channel (living), Tammy Lenski (Mediator Tech - eating - and Conflict Zen - breathing) and ADR Prof Blog (thinking).  If you have friends and family, let alone legal disputes, these ADR blogs are all a must on your own personal Top Blawg list (and with this post I hereby grant Tammy Lenski an honorary law degree)

And those of you who haven't yet drunk deeply of the Twitter KoolAid, dive right in @vpynchon.

Video below is part I of an interview on negotiation challenges, strategies and tactics for women with

Vicki Flaugher, founder of SmartWoman Guides.  The full audio of the video is here along with Ms. Flaugher's kind comments about our conversation.   Ms. Flaugher describes her site resources as follows:

If you’re a beginning female entrepreneur or a women who is thinking about starting in business for herself, you have found your tribe. You have arrived at a safe place to talk about business. Especially if you are 35-55 years old, you are going to love this site because that’s a magic age time. You really discover who you are during those years and finally decide to do what you love instead of just what you’re “supposed” to do. The spirit of that revelation and all the promise it holds is why this site was created.

Now, Part I of Negotiating Women!

"Never Fear to Negotiate" from JFK's Inaugural Address with video here.

So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free."

And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

When I read accounts like the one below, I always ask myself, "what trespasses have I suffered that would permit me not to forgive?"

As she sat in her boyfriend’s car, a young Texas woman named Dee Dee Washington was shot and killed — an innocent bystander of a drug deal gone bad. For 14 years, the man who fired the shot, Ron Flowers, never admitted to killing her — not until, that is, Ron was admitted to the InnerChange Freedom Initiative® (IFI), the prison program launched by Prison Fellowship in Texas.

IFI applies principles of restorative justice by confronting offenders with the harm they have done to their victims. During one of IFI’s Victim Awareness sessions, Ron finally admitted that he did commit the murder, and he prayed that his victim’s family would forgive him. He wrote a letter to Dee Dee’s mother, Mrs. Anna Washington, expressing his repentance and deep remorse.

For her part, Mrs. Washington had written angry letters every year to the parole board, urging them to deny Ron parole. But when Ron confessed, Mrs. Washington felt an overwhelming conviction that she should meet the man who had killed her daughter.

Prison Fellowship staff carefully prepared Mrs. Washington and Ron for the meeting. Mrs. Washington finally could ask the questions that virtually every victim wants to ask: “Why did you do it?” “How did it happen?” Ron reassured her that her daughter was not involved in the drug deal. As Ron told her about the day that he killed her daughter, Mrs. Washington took his hands in hers and said, “I forgive you.”

I was in Houston for Ron’s graduation from IFI. As Ron crossed the stage to receive his diploma, Mrs. Washington rose from her seat and walked over to embrace Ron, the man who had murdered her daughter. She then told all of us in the audience, “This young man is my adopted son.”

From the blog of the First Baptist Church of Perryville.