- The family's success in court also would depend upon how much a jury finds her life was worth — in dollars, said Tom Keefe, a Belleville-based personal injury attorney.
"If you kill a homeless man with no job, he's not worth very much. But if you wipe out (Cardinals star) Matt Holliday, who is making $20 million a year, it's worth a lot of money," Keefe said. "Even though they are both human beings and both victims, the truth is, death cases are evaluated by the losses you can prove the survivors have suffered."
She was a human being and she should have been listened to. Do you think she would have been further inspected by the Doctors had she been white and well educated?
People looked at her and saw a crazy homeless junkie with poor insurance. It's sad that she was never able to get the mental and physical help she needed. Still, it's hard for me to feel too angry at the doctors and officers involved. They gave her the standard treatment and unfortunately didn't find anything pressing, so they assumed the worse. Seeing thousands of similar cases in their line of work wore their compassion down to apathy and indifference which seem even more monstrous in retrospect. Fuck, this whole story has me conflicted. I don't know what to feel or who to blame. It's all so frustrating.
By the way, I'm just playing devils advocate here. I assume much judgment was passed but that judgement came at the expense of years of repetitive behavior on the part of homeless junkies that likely fit her bill.