Brent McDonald, right, was murdered on a Seattle sidewalk almost exactly one year ago today.
Brent McDonald, right, was murdered on a Seattle sidewalk almost exactly one year ago today. Courtesy of Danielle Logan

One year ago, Brent McDonald was murdered on a Seattle sidewalk. I have a piece in this week's paper about this crime, the two lives that intersected on that sidewalk, and how their families and the criminal justice system wrestled with questions of justice in the murder's aftermath.

One of the central pieces of the story is a letter Brent's brother, Brian McDonald, wrote to the King County Superior Court judge who would decide the punishment for his brother's killer. In it, Brian McDonald asks what justice means when his brother's killer "undoubtedly suffered many of the same indignities that Brent and I did."

He writes: "Those who don't have to suffer the constant insults and slights and plain injustices that occur because one walks around in black skin have a hard time comprehending what it does to one's psyche. Sometimes the path of least resistance is to live down to the expectations others have of you. The struggle to prove your worth or humanity can sometimes be a heavy load and sometimes people break under the strain."

The surviving McDonald brother asks the judge what justice even means when his brother's killer could have grown up in a house without love, or in a house with lead paint, like so many impoverished children of color do. His letter is an empathic and heartbreaking search for meaning within the discord of grief, and it made such a powerful impression on Judge Hollis Hill that she referenced it when she delivered the sentence for Brent McDonald's murderer, Richard Whitaker.

Read the full letter here.