Thursday, Indianapolis, Indiana

Can you imagine being under unfair suspicion for a dozen years by the police - as well as the entire country - for the murder of your own young child? Here you are, stunned in grief that your little girl was killed in the basement, but you must use your energy and keep your focus on trying to prove your innocence! How do you even begin to get your mind around this trauma? You can’t even begin the coping process because the police have turned their suspicions on you as the suspect in the crime. This is the nightmare that came upon the Ramsey family in Boulder, Colorado in 1996.

After more than a decade of suspicion where the press accounts led many, if not most Americans to believe that the parents were somehow involved in their daughter’s murder, the Ramseys were finally exonerated. New DNA evidence formally eliminated the family as suspects and made clear that an unknown male was at the scene that night. Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy officially apologized for the cloud of suspicion that has hung over the Ramseys for all these years. This was some comfort to John Ramsey but too late for mother Patsy who died in 2006 of ovarian cancer - going to her grave without the vindication she deserved.

We live in trust that the authorities will behave with honor and competence, and that while we might possibly become the victim of a criminal, we will be protected by the police and other law enforcement authorities. But when we become the victims of the very system itself, the nightmare becomes all too real. Today’s vindication comes far too late for the Ramsey family, virtually destroyed by the unspeakable tragedy visited on their house the night their little girl was slain.

The capricious whimsy that can bring down upon us the power of the civil authorities when we are innocent is among the most frightening possibilities of life. The Ramsey case is a cautionary tale. The District Attorney’s apology is weak and late and shameful.