Lastingly Burdened by What Has Been

Early in my legal career, I represented a high-security prison that wanted to suspend, for six months, a guard who, while bored and sitting alone in a watchtower one night, took his shotgun and blasted a hole in the wall.

While the guard claimed the shooting was accidental, the gun’s safety was shown to have been intentionally disengaged. At the end of a half-day hearing, the judge concluded that the guard had violated work rules. But instead of suspending him for six months, the judge concluded...