Parents of a murdered student supported amnesty for their daughter’s killers
Evidence
In 1993, when South Africa was on the cusp of its transition, Amy Biehl was devoting a significant amount of her time as a foreign student to the work of rebuilding South Africa. Nelson Mandela had been freed in 1990, but had not yet been elected president. On August 25, Biehl was driving several black friends to their home in Guguletu when a crowd shouting antiwhite slogans confronted her, and some of them stoned and stabbed her to death. Four of the men participating in the attack were convicted of her murder and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. In 1997, Linda and Peter Biehl—Amy’s mother and father—decided to support the amnesty petition the men presented to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The four apologized to the Biehls and were released in July 1998. Two of them—Easy Nofemela and Ntobeko Peni—later met with the Biehls, who, despite much pressure to the contrary, agreed to see them. According to Nofemela, he wanted to say more about his own sorrow for killing their daughter than what had been possible during Truth and Reconciliation hearings. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 299
Categorization
- SEED: The Biehl case is a powerful counterexample to the claim that restorative justice cannot handle murder — a vivid essay on what reconciliation requires of victims.
- XREF: connects to: Restorative justice can transform victim families into allies of their loved one’s killers — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 301