Erikās Day in Court1
Erik, a 48-year-old IT-recruiter from a village in the South of the Netherlands, sits in the back of the courtroom. As he watches the judge and clerk enter, he recalls that day when disaster struck. On a beautiful spring morning, now nearly 15 months ago, his parents in law took his two-year-old daughter Ize for a short bike ride through the village. At the same time, a big BMW driving at a high speed, approached a bent on a parallel road. Suddenly, the driver lost control over his car. He went off the road, crashed through a small hedge separating the road from the bike lane, and killed both Ize and her grandparents instantly.
Now, one-year-and-a-half years later, the driver of the BMW stands trial. Erik and his partner Moniek listen intensely as the judge starts reading out her verdict. After summarizing the facts of the case, she glances into the courtroom and concludes:
All considering, and given the sentences imposed in similar cases, the court feels that the defendant should be given 120 hours of community service.2
Before the judge finishes reading her verdict , Erik suddenly erupts in anger. Shouting and cursing, he picks up a chair and hurls it at the judge, leaving the other people in the courtroom stunned and shocked. Erik is grabbed by two policemen and after some struggle, they rush him out of the courtroom. As the door of the court closes, Moniek cries out to the judge:
Our life has been completely destroyed, but he gets away with 120 hours! (cited in Quekel 2014)
After the Verdict
In the following days, Erik and Moniek give several newspaper interviews and Erik appears in a popular talk show on national television. In one of these interviews, Erik explains that they had been waiting for their day in court for a long time:
For us, this was the final stretch of a huge legal mountain that we had been climbing for the past 15 months. The only thing missing was the verdict. (cited in Van den Hurk 2014)
Reflecting on his angry reaction in the courtroom, Erik says that he never expected this from himself but that all of a sudden āall went blackā before his eyes (cited in Van den Hurk 2014). Although the public prosecutor had requested a 15 months prison sentence, Erik and Moniek realized that in many similar cases, the courts had issued much lower sentences. Yet, when the judge read out her final verdict, this still came as a complete surprise to them.
Part of Erik and Moniekās anger is aimed at the imposed sentence:
This feels like a great insult. You might as well impose no sentence as all. (cited in Boere 2014)
But much of their frustration is also aimed at the justice system in general. Moniek explains:
The way in which this case was handled is incredible and with a complete lack of respect . (cited in Van den Hurk 2014)
She feels that, during the police investigation and the trial, they were left completely in the dark:
On top of the grieving process that we had to go through, there was also the lack of clarity and a lot of insecurity about the investigations that were taking place. The long waiting. Nobody tells you anything. And finally the trial with a terrible outcome. (cited in Brabants Dagblad 2015)
Moreover, Moniek criticizes the unresponsive attitude of the judge:
That look from the judge, after I had yelled that our life had been destroyed and that he was only given community service. We briefly looked each other in the eye. She turned a page of her notes; and that was it. (cited in Van den Hurk 2014)
As soon as the news of the verdict becomes public, it provokes a wave of controversy in the Netherlands. Many people share their anger and disbelief about the courtās decision on the websites of local newspapers and on social media . A local TV station caught the whole incidentāincluding the moment when Erik throws the chair at the judgeāon video. It doesnāt take long before this video goes āviralā on YouTube with over 4 million online viewers.3 Immediately, after the news of the court decision emerges, it also causes a wave of criticism on social media (see Panorama 2014). On Twitter , the court case soon becomes ātrending topicā and many people support Erikās angry outburst4:
I donāt blame him, 120 hours of community service is of course ridiculous.
Iām dying of shame for the Dutch justice system.
Judges infuriate people with their verdicts; donāt they?
Also, soon after the verdict, a petition is launched on Facebook:
By liking this site you can show that you are against the verdict of 120 hours of community service which was given to the Pole who killed 3 people in a road accident; and against the reasoning of the judge.5
In a few days, this petition collects over 23,000 ālikesā.
In response to the growing public protest , the court takes an unprecedented step. Only hours after delivering its verdict, it decides to publish a statement on its website, explaining the ruling of the court to the general public.6 In the Netherlands, as in most other countries, it is extremely rare that a court directly comments on its own decision outside the courtroom. The statement is a fairly technical account of how the court interprets the facts and the law in this case. The court explains that, in its view, there was no proof that the driver of the BMW was (excessively) speeding. Consequently, the court feels thatāin the technical sense of the Dutch Traffic Actāthe driver was not āguilt...