The Law: Should a Murderer Pay?

Confessed Rapist-Murderer Robert Eugene Watson deserved to be executed, said Maryland Judge George B. Rasin. But since such a sentence has become "an exercise in futility," Rasin gave the defendant a life term—and then tacked on an extraordinary proviso. Watson will be eligible for parole in 15 years, but whenever he is released, said the judge, he must pay 40% of his income for the rest of his life to the two sons of the housewife he killed.

Paying reparations is an ancient custom, and although it is not often invoked in U.S. law, it may be making a comeback. This summer, a pilot Restitution House in the Minneapolis area plans to take in 25 prisoner volunteers —check forgers, burglars and the like —whose crimes involved only property. They will be employed in the community and repay their victims out of their earnings. The program excludes any prisoners convicted of violent crimes.

Watson clearly would not be eligible. But even if he were, strenuous objections to Judge Rasin's reparations order have already been heard from an unexpected source: the victim's husband. The payments, Benjamin Blum said emotionally, would only serve to remind his sons of their mother's murder, and might even put them in physical danger from Watson or his friends. "It's society's duty to take care of the crime," contends Blum. "Why should society throw it back to me?" If the court does not change its ruling, Blum says, he is "going to be forced" into the distasteful position of hiring a lawyer to try to have the payment of reparations removed from the sentence of his wife's killer.