Violence doesn’t heal violence. Healing does. Let us not pretend for one moment that killing #BrandonBernard was an act of care for the victims’ families.

While Todd Bagley’s mother expressed relief that the process was over, the only thing she said about healing, when she appeared to go off script from her prepared statement, was: "The apology and remorse...helped very much heal my heart. I can very much say: I forgive them."

It was not the state sanctioned murder, but Brandon’s honest and accountable apology and remorse, that brought her some measure of peace. That is because that’s how healing works. And at the risk of stating the obvious, that healing was available without his death.

She did not express relief he was dead. She expressed relief that the process, which is grueling and retraumatizing for victims too, was over. That process could have ended in 1999 if Bernard has been sentenced to prison rather than death, and her healing could have begun then.

And he—himself a survivor, beloved by his family and others, accountable, changed and committed to change—could have lived into the world we must all create and that he always deserved. Rest in Peace #BrandonBernard. May our nation transform even half as much as you did.

And now even as we grieve we hold Alfred Bourgeois and all those who love him in our hearts today as the state prepares to execute him when the sun sets. https://www.themarshallproject.org/next-to-die/fe