When a trial is over, the jury gets instructions from the judge and then goes to deliberate. All during the trial, we tried not to look at the jury too much. We didn't want to make them uncomfortable or want them to think we were trying to solicit sympathy. But it was hard when they walked out of the courtroom, charged with their heavy burden. Hard not to look at their faces. Impossible not to feel sympathy for them. They were young and old, men and women, obviously from all walks of life. I wondered about their lives. What had they left behind to say yes to doing one of the hardest things our society asks of us: to hear and see the effects of man's hatred of his fellow man; man's total disregard for another's life, hopes, plans, family. And then to decide the guilt or innocence, punishment or vindication, life or death of that man. 

On the first day of the trial one young jurist had to be excused. Her little son contracted the H1N1 virus and was hospitalized. My goodness. What happened in the others' lives while they sat on the jury? I wondered how this terrible trial would affect them, what they would carry with them for the rest of their lives. I hoped and prayed it wouldn't be a long-lasting suffering for them. 

A helplessness sets in when the trial is turned over to the jury. Twelve men and women will make a judgment on what we already knew: Brian and Aaron were murdered; Terrell and Nathan were already convicted; confessions and DNA proved their guilt. We knew that but the jury had to officially declare it - or declare Terrell Yarbrough not-guilty. 

Some people have said to me, "What difference does it make? It won't bring Brian and Aaron back." 

It makes all the difference. There are the common sense reasons: we have a duty to keep dangerous people off of the streets of America; we have to punish crime, especially murder, in order to live in a somewhat-peaceful society; we have to right the scales of justice when they topple over and incarceration helps us do that; we have an obligation to try to rehabilitate a criminal. 

Most of all, we have a right to our lives and we want to live in a society that honors that. God loves life and hates murder. 

So many times over the last 10 years I have thought about the questions God asked Cain: "Where is your brother?" "What have you done?" I imagine God asking those questions with a heavy voice, coming from the heaviest heart. I imagine those words echoing out from the beginning of humanity down to our time. Heartbreaking questions, asked even though the answer was known. Known and dreaded. 

"What have you done? Your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground." 

Blood represented life. 

"You will be banned from the ground that opened it's mouth to receive your brother's blood..." Why? For all the reasons mentioned above but especially for this reason: that ground became holy and until Cain became holy he had no right to walk upon it. For Cain to become holy and worthy to be in his brother's presence again, he had to realize what he did, be totally ashamed and sorry, and make up for it the rest of his life. 

To have a brother. A gift so precious we may not realize it until he is no more. I sit here with my hands over the keyboard, not wanting to write the next chapter of this story because it is so painful. The story of two brothers who, unlike Cain and Abel, never had any envy between them. They only and always loved each other. Chris had 18 years with Brian and now 10 years without him. He gave Brian a beautiful eulogy in 1999 and would give him another one in 2009 in a courtroom in Pennsylvania.

Love and prayers,

Rachel