ProPublica, in a 2023 story, reexamined the incident, the legal presumptions, the background of the men and Stingley’s father’s relentless legal campaign to bring the men into court. The three men previously had defended their actions as justified and necessary to deal with an emergency as they held Stingley while waiting for police to arrive.
Ozanne, who was appointed in 2022 to review the case, recommended the agreement after the two men and the Stingley family engaged in an extensive restorative justice process, in which they sat face to face, under the supervision of a retired judge, and shared their thoughts and feelings. Ozanne said in the letter that the process “appears to have been healing for all involved.”
From the bench, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Laura Crivello said she found the agreement to be fair and just and commended the work of all the parties to come to a resolution.
“Maybe this is the spark that makes other people see similarities in each other and not differences,” she said. “Maybe this is the spark that makes them think about restorative justice and how do we come together. And maybe this is part of the spark that decreases the violence in our community and leads us to finding the paths to have those circles to sit down and have the dialogue and to have that conversation. So maybe there’s some good that comes out of it.”
That if someone murdered a person I loved over bullshit, like grown men play-pretending they’re cops, I would not be satisfied with a $500 fine and a slap on the wrist for the person that murdered them. And also knowing that if I had fought for 13 years just to get the legal system to simply acknowledge that they were, in fact, murdered, I would likely take what I could get since the alternative is nothing.
Wrong. The alternative is hunting the guilty on the streets. The judicial system forgets that it is the alternative, not the original. The old ways of generational blood feuds and public dismemberment are only a few hungry days away at any time.
Restorative justice programs have been widely successful. The alternative to that is the current system in North America. If someone I loved was murdered I sure as hell wouldn’t want my tax dollars turning the murderers into career criminals. Sending someone to jail isn’t a satisfying revenge.