Desperation in the Desert.
Ok... here's the situation: You have decided to take a cross country road trip with a close friend. You have made it half way across the broad expanse of the nation, and you realize you are well ahead of your schedule. You decide to act on a recommendation offered by a relative- take a look at Carlsbad Caverns. By the time you arrive at the national park that surrounds the attraction, it is too late for you to take the tour. Part of your pre-trip plans included spending some nights out underneath the starry skies, roughing it. You decide to take an evening walk down into Rattlesnake Canyon and pitch a tent for the night. Although you have gathered some rudimentary camping supplies, you aren't planning on spending a lot of time in the Canyon, and so you figure that the 80 ounces of water and Gatorade you pack will be plenty.
When you awake early the next morning, having used up all but a pint of your water, you gather your gear and start your hike back to your car. However as the sun rises and brings its brutal desert heat, you have difficulty finding your way back out the way you had entered the evening before. You climb a rise, but see nothing that looks like civilization. Now you have expended the remainder of your water, and you are no closer to getting out. A whole afternoon is spent before you resign yourselves to spending another night in the park.
Luckily you had been required to fill out forms for a camping permit, and despite the fact that the ranger that collected your information seemed like a greenhorn, you have confidence that park staff will realize that you were due a day earlier and soon come to look for you. At this point your strength has been sapped, and you are starting to become dehydrated. For the last twenty-four hours, you have relied solely on the nourishment of under-ripe prickly pears. After three days in the heat, you are beginning to get desperate. Your companion is getting progressively weaker, and is retching bile that you have to clear from his mouth with your own hand. You decide that getting fined for arson is preferable to perishing of thirst, and so you break the rules to start a signal fire. Disconcertingly, the smoke barely reaches the top of the canyon. You are slowly losing all hope.
On the fourth day, it is clear that you are not going to be rescued. It's extremely difficult to witness your friend going through the slow excruciating process of dying. In desperation, he turns to you and requests that you bury your pocketknife in his chest, thus ending his misery. At first you refuse, but he manages to bring forth the words around his swollen tongue and out of his dryly- cracked mouth. He looks at you pleadingly, and begs you to end his suffering- "Put your knife through my chest." What do you do?
Perhaps you do as Raffi Kodikian did under these circumstances in the summer of 1999- you commit an act that you've never even imagined you'd be asked to perform... a mercy-killing. Can you conceive of the weight of your guilt when you are discovered by a ranger only hours after you've taken your best friend's life? And later, after an hour in the hospital, you are charged with the murder of your friend. Kodikian faced life imprisonment (or worse) for his actions. Despite the fact that his friends, and even the family of the deceased David Coughlin, never doubted his intentions... there was media speculation that Kodikian had other motives for his "crime". His lawyers knew he had no recourse to a temporary insanity charge in New Mexico, so they had to come up with an alternative defense.
These events are recounted in detail in Jason Kersten's Journal of the Dead (2003). No stone is left unturned in the examination of the case- the history of friendship that Kodikian and Coughlin shared, a travel journal providing crucial evidence, and the resulting trial itself. While the amount of true insight contained in the book seems a bit thin to justify its moderate length- it is still an interesting read. I think it's inevitable that the reader will ask him/herself how (s)he would have acted in the circumstances that confronted Raffi Kodikian. At the same time, it's natural to question the way society views and casts judgment in such a situation. Providing Kodikian's account of his time in that canyon is true- is it justifiable to bring murder charges against him? How can we construct laws that fairly deal with such an improbable eventuality? And what do our conclusions say about ourselves?
When you awake early the next morning, having used up all but a pint of your water, you gather your gear and start your hike back to your car. However as the sun rises and brings its brutal desert heat, you have difficulty finding your way back out the way you had entered the evening before. You climb a rise, but see nothing that looks like civilization. Now you have expended the remainder of your water, and you are no closer to getting out. A whole afternoon is spent before you resign yourselves to spending another night in the park.
Luckily you had been required to fill out forms for a camping permit, and despite the fact that the ranger that collected your information seemed like a greenhorn, you have confidence that park staff will realize that you were due a day earlier and soon come to look for you. At this point your strength has been sapped, and you are starting to become dehydrated. For the last twenty-four hours, you have relied solely on the nourishment of under-ripe prickly pears. After three days in the heat, you are beginning to get desperate. Your companion is getting progressively weaker, and is retching bile that you have to clear from his mouth with your own hand. You decide that getting fined for arson is preferable to perishing of thirst, and so you break the rules to start a signal fire. Disconcertingly, the smoke barely reaches the top of the canyon. You are slowly losing all hope.
On the fourth day, it is clear that you are not going to be rescued. It's extremely difficult to witness your friend going through the slow excruciating process of dying. In desperation, he turns to you and requests that you bury your pocketknife in his chest, thus ending his misery. At first you refuse, but he manages to bring forth the words around his swollen tongue and out of his dryly- cracked mouth. He looks at you pleadingly, and begs you to end his suffering- "Put your knife through my chest." What do you do?
Perhaps you do as Raffi Kodikian did under these circumstances in the summer of 1999- you commit an act that you've never even imagined you'd be asked to perform... a mercy-killing. Can you conceive of the weight of your guilt when you are discovered by a ranger only hours after you've taken your best friend's life? And later, after an hour in the hospital, you are charged with the murder of your friend. Kodikian faced life imprisonment (or worse) for his actions. Despite the fact that his friends, and even the family of the deceased David Coughlin, never doubted his intentions... there was media speculation that Kodikian had other motives for his "crime". His lawyers knew he had no recourse to a temporary insanity charge in New Mexico, so they had to come up with an alternative defense.
These events are recounted in detail in Jason Kersten's Journal of the Dead (2003). No stone is left unturned in the examination of the case- the history of friendship that Kodikian and Coughlin shared, a travel journal providing crucial evidence, and the resulting trial itself. While the amount of true insight contained in the book seems a bit thin to justify its moderate length- it is still an interesting read. I think it's inevitable that the reader will ask him/herself how (s)he would have acted in the circumstances that confronted Raffi Kodikian. At the same time, it's natural to question the way society views and casts judgment in such a situation. Providing Kodikian's account of his time in that canyon is true- is it justifiable to bring murder charges against him? How can we construct laws that fairly deal with such an improbable eventuality? And what do our conclusions say about ourselves?
Labels: Book Review, Jason Kerstan, Non-fiction, Raffi Kodikian, True Crime
posted by Merge Divide at 3:39 PM
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