How to Make Amends

The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.

Shankar Vedantam:

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. All of us form quick impressions of the strangers we meet, we do this automatically and unconsciously, and we do this all the time. We categorize people into nice and not so nice, friendly, and unhelpful. Much of the time, these quick conclusions are partly true and partly exaggerated, they are caricatures of people we barely know. Our tendency to draw quick conclusions is especially powerful when the strangers we encounter do something to hurt us. Think about the last time someone stepped on your foot as you were leaving a crowded theater, or the time a motorist nearly hit you as you were crossing a pedestrian intersection, or when someone stole something from you. At such times, we can't help but imagine how terrible this person must be when they're not stepping on our toes or being a reckless driver or being a thief.

Today on the program, an unusual story about two strangers who first met as adversaries. Like all of us, they came to quick conclusions about each other, but then nearly a decade later, each man had the opportunity to pull the curtain back on the other's life. How the simple act of conversation can transform the way we see each other, this week on Hidden Brain.

James Carter still remembers the bike.

James Carter:

It was a Trek 7.3 FX in blue with fenders, a tow hitch, and a bike bump, and a water bowl holder.

Shankar Vedantam:

It was a great bike, it had all the gears of a standard racing bike, plus tires thick enough to withstand glass and gravel on city streets. James loved his bike, it was his primary form of transportation after he immigrated to the United States from England.

James Carter:

Definitely, when I first moved over here, once my car license expired after the short period that it's valid internationally, I just rode a bike and took the bus to work. And so a lot of the time, if my wife was using the car, then I would have to use the bicycle to get around with the kids.

Shankar Vedantam:

James lived in Harrisonburg, Virginia, about two and a half hours southwest of Washington DC. He chose the city because it was affordable, had good public schools, and low crime. When his two children were small, James ran errands with them with a trailer attached to his bike.

James Carter:

At the time, I was the sole breadwinner in the house, and so you have a bike and a trailer because that's really what you can afford to do on a daily basis versus paying for gasoline instead of food.

Shankar Vedantam:

James hadn't gone to college and he discovered it was hard to get a well-paying job. He found a gig maintaining and running websites at a local school, James Madison University.

James Carter:

And at the time, my wife didn't have a job, so we were living below the poverty line for several years when we first moved to the United States.

Shankar Vedantam:

Many of James's happier stories revolve around bikes.

James Carter:

I think probably the fondest memory is when my youngest child, Eleanor, started to ride a bicycle without what we call stabilizers, I don't know what they're called in America.

Shankar Vedantam:

Training wheels.

James Carter:

Training wheels, yeah. So when Eleanor had the training wheels taken off of her bicycle and we were riding around the top level of the parking deck, and I have a video of her just saying...

Eleanor:

I'm picking up the pace.

James Carter:

And that's what she just kept on saying over and over again, and she would ride around this empty parking deck.

Shankar Vedantam:

James sometimes left his bike at work so he could get around campus. But one day, when he stepped outside his building, he couldn't find the bike.

James Carter:

I looked down to check the bike rack and noticed that it was gone. And I had a kryptonite lock, I've always been very careful about looking at my bike and making sure that I usually try and put it through the wheel as well as the frame.

Shankar Vedantam:

When you saw the bike missing, what went through your mind, James?

James Carter:

It was probably a feeling of panic, just dread that dropped into my heart straight away to see that part of my life just gone. And there's all emotions of concern, of anger, of hurt when you go through that of, why is this person doing this to me?

Shankar Vedantam:

For some people, having a bike stolen is an annoyance, a headache. For James, it was a disaster, he needed his bike for work and to take care of his family. How was he going to get to appointments around campus, run errands on the weekend? He reported the theft to campus police.

James Carter:

And it felt like they were just filling out some paperwork so that I could complete an insurance claim, which I knew there was no way that I would be able to purchase a new bike with a deductible on my home insurance. And it was really disappointing because I knew there was no way I was going to be able to afford a new bike or replace it in any way, shape, or form.

Shankar Vedantam:

James was anguished, he was scraping by and the thief had taken one of the few things that held his life together. When he got home, he flipped open his laptop and decided to put his internet skills to use.

James Carter:

I started Googling how to get your stolen bike back, and I came across a website that had various different tips on there about the steps that I needed to take to try and get my bike back. And that was reporting it to the National Stolen Bike Registry, local bike shops, local used good shops. And one of those was setting up alerts for Craigslist in the state that you are in and the surrounding states as well.

Shankar Vedantam:

The idea was to spot the thief if he posted an ad to sell the bike.

James Carter:

I set up a series of Google alerts for every Craigslist in Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, and DC and Trek was the key word that I searched for. Now, did I believe that I was going to get it back? I wasn't that hopeful.

Shankar Vedantam:

But several days later, one alert did go off.

James Carter:

I received an email that said, Trek 7.3, FX Blue, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and I thought, no, surely it can't be the case. And I clicked on the link and there was my bike, it had the trailer hitch attached to the saddle, it had all of the accessories that I'd put on the bike, it was my bike without a shadow of a doubt.

Shankar Vedantam:

James reasoned that he could not respond to the Craigslist ad and accuse the seller of stealing his bike. Surely the thief would simply vanish.

James Carter:

And so I decided to set up a bunch of fake email addresses and each email address had a persona attached to it because I knew that if this guy sold the bike, I'd never see it again. So I had created people, and if I remember correctly, it was like a housewife who was trying to get her husband to start getting back into exercising, someone who wanted to upgrade their bike, those sorts of things. And so I created various different emails with Yahoo and Google and some other platforms so it didn't seem obvious that it was all coming from the same person.

Shankar Vedantam:

Let me just understand what you're saying, you're saying that because other people might have been trying to buy that bike as well, you, in some ways, wanted to flood the market with offers that were all coming from you, so that if he picked one person to sell the bike to, odds were that person would be you.

James Carter:

Correct. And I had a couple that I knew I was going to try and drop the price down and was offering low numbers and then others that I was offering more favorable pricing on. And ultimately, we whittled down to just this one individual that he then agreed to meet to sell the bike to.

Shankar Vedantam:

James arranged to meet the seller, a man who called himself Donovan at a Starbucks, then he made a phone call.

James Carter:

I phoned up the Harrisonburg Police Department and essentially told them that I've managed to find the criminal who's stolen my bicycle and he's going to meet up with me to sell it back to me. And so it was phrased more in a sense of, my bike was stolen, I've managed to find it on Craigslist and I'm meeting the guy at Starbucks at a certain time today, would you like to be a part of that to help me get the bike back? And they were thrilled and just needed to find an unmarked police car to come to the location.

Shankar Vedantam:

When James got to the Starbucks ahead of the meeting, he was nervous.

James Carter:

I sat inside of the Starbucks waiting for him to arrive, I'd been emailing back and forth from that location and I saw him arrive in his car with two bikes on the back of it, one of which was mine. And so I called the police to let them know that he'd arrived and they said that they were still trying to find a unmarked car, but would try and be there as soon as possible.

Shankar Vedantam:

James pondered whether he could go through with the sting on his own without the police. He waited a bit, then called the police again.

James Carter:

And I relayed to them that he said he was only going to stay around for a short period of time, he had other people interested in it, and I knew that this was my one and only chance to get the bike.

Shankar Vedantam:

It was like a scene from a movie, James weighed his options.

James Carter:

I was considering whether I just run outside and grab the bike and go. And all sorts of things are going through my head, I grew up in the UK, you don't have to worry about guns and knives really to the degree that you do in the United States. So everything that I do over here that could potentially involve a confrontation, that is my immediate thought.

Shankar Vedantam:

The driver of the car with the stolen bikes got out, he walked toward the Starbucks, James got a good look at him, he didn't look like a gangster.

James Carter:

He looked like a student. He didn't look threatening, not what I was expecting. He was driving a clean and a nice car, he had a nice bike rack on the back of it, and I don't know what I was expecting to arrive, but I remember thinking that, this person looks like they're probably reasonably well off, they were well presented, that kind of thing.

Shankar Vedantam:

Seeing the well-dressed thief and his nice car made James very angry.

James Carter:

When you know the potential hardship that you are going to have to go through and someone else is stealing your property and it doesn't appear like there is a real need. If someone came to me and say, I stole your bike because I don't have enough money to feed my kids, that's a very different story to someone who has their own vehicle and looks well presented. So certainly, yes, there was immense disappointment.

Shankar Vedantam:

Meanwhile, the cops still had not arrived. James coolly let Donovan get to the Starbucks counter and order a drink, he didn't identify himself.

James Carter:

But thankfully, shortly after, my phone rang and it was the police to say that they were outside in an unmarked car and they needed me to come outside and identify myself. So I walked outside and raised my hand in the air and ran it through my hair and they confirmed that they'd seen me and then told me that I needed to engage the suspect in a transaction.

And so I walk back into Starbucks and look around as if I'm trying to see someone and deliberately don't look at him, walk out to the car, look at the bike, and I literally just press the tire on my bike to try and see what the air pressure is like. And with that, he walks out and comes over to me and asks me if I'm the person that he's been communicating with via email. And with that, I shake his hand and this red unmarked police car comes flying into the parking lot and two police officers get out of the vehicle.

Shankar Vedantam:

They tackled the young man and threw him to the ground. They told James to go back in the coffee shop.

James Carter:

And so I walked back in and the barista asks me, what's going on outside? And I said, well, that guy out there is getting arrested for stealing my bicycle. And so the barista then looks at me and says, hey everyone, and picks up Don's frappuccino and says, Don's going downtown for stealing a bike, would you like his frappuccino? And so I take the frappuccino, sit down while I watch Don being arrested for stealing my bicycle.

And it was quite possibly the most perfect moment that I've ever had in my entire life of having this amazing cold frappuccino being given to me because the person that bought it, it was going to be thrown away, and that person was getting arrested for stealing my bike. And so there was this great moment of justice happening right here. I was reunited with my bike and the police also found bolt cutters in the back of his car with my bike lock and helmet in there. And he was taken away to be processed, whatever they did with him.

Shankar Vedantam:

Justice had been served with whipped cream on top. Or...had it? You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam, Donovan grew up in Florida and Virginia, the oldest child in a middle-class family, we're going to use only his first name in this story for reasons that will become clear shortly. His dad was from Singapore, his mom from Pennsylvania.

Donovan:

But they were pretty strict, they had a lot of intentions of me excelling academically. I did feel like there was a lot of pressure growing up to become a physician or physician assistant or something like that.

Shankar Vedantam:

Donovan attended James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He hoped to go to medical school, but he struggled in some of his pre-med classes and had to shift gears, he graduated with a degree in health sciences.

Donovan:

This was about a year after I graduated from college, I was working at a hospital as a cardiac tech, working long shifts, probably 12 hour shifts, three to five days a week depending on the shift, trying to save up a lot of money to become a medical technologist with the hospital that I was currently working at. So they had this great program where you could work and earn your master's degree at this accredited program, and then I was accepted.

Shankar Vedantam:

Donovan was worried about the cost of grad school, he wasn't sure he could afford it since he'd have to cut back his work hours while attending school. When he totaled up the tuition payments and subtracted the income he would be losing, the numbers didn't add up. But then, he had a light bulb moment.

Donovan:

I had done the calculation for the rent that I was owing at the place that I was renting and I realized that it would be more advantageous to just buy a house, actually find some tenants, get some money from the tenant income. And that would be the supplement to the work that I would've lost while I did my education.

Shankar Vedantam:

It seemed like a perfect solution, he found a house to buy and had enough money for the down payment, or rather, he had almost enough, he was about $400 short. He felt he couldn't ask his parents for money or borrow it from friends, he needed to get his hands on some cash fast.

Donovan:

I think it just popped into my head, what is the easiest way to get $400 quickly? I had seen some bicycles on the side of the road that I thought I could take and fix them up and try to sell them on Craigslist. Because I was really big into biking through much of my college years and I understood the inner workings of a bike and felt like my expertise in fixing bikes was adequate enough that I could make a profit off of this.

Shankar Vedantam:

Donovan was pretty sure the bikes had been sitting around for a while.

Donovan:

They were pretty nice hybrid bikes, and they had just been sitting there for, it was weeks and weeks, it might have even been months. But they looked abandoned, I think they had a rusty chain that could have been replaced.

Shankar Vedantam:

Donovan had never stolen a bike before, but he rationalized that if the bikes were abandoned, he would be committing a victimless crime. But that didn't stop him from being terrified at what he was about to do.

Donovan:

I was absolutely afraid I was going to get caught, I knew it was something bad to do, but I felt like I had no other choice and this also would've been the quickest way to bring in $400. I bought a $20 set of chain cutters, and I went in the middle of the night, observing that nobody else was around, I parked real quickly, snipped the chains and then put them in the back of my car.

Shankar Vedantam:

Was your heart pounding through all of this? What did it feel like to be doing this?

Donovan:

I think this was probably one of the highest anxiety points that I have ever experienced, was committing this crime. It felt really bad when I did it.

Shankar Vedantam:

Donovan drove the bikes back to his apartment. His place was on the second floor, so he carried the bikes up the stairs one by one.

Donovan:

And I think I didn't even look at them the rest of the night because I just wanted to deal with it in the morning, what I had done.

Shankar Vedantam:

Shortly afterwards, his mindset on making the down payment, Donovan fixed up the bikes, snapped some photos, and posted an ad on Craigslist.

Donovan:

And then I got a response almost immediately actually, I think it was within a day. They said they were very interested in buying the bikes.

Shankar Vedantam:

That very interested buyer, of course, was James Carter. Donovan didn't do much to cover his tracks, he identified himself as Donovan to the persona that James had set up. When Donovan got to the Starbucks, he had to remind himself not to act like a criminal.

Donovan:

I went into the Starbucks to grab a drink while I waited, trying to act as normal and as level-headed as possible, doing normal things that a person would who's waiting for a normal transaction. And I remember I looked out the Starbucks window and I saw somebody looking at the bikes. So before even my name was called at the Starbucks, I walked out the door and immediately I found myself shoved down to the ground, put in handcuffs, and dragged over to the police car. And then I saw that there were about five or six police cars and another 10 to 12 police just standing around.

Shankar Vedantam:

One cop asked Donovan where he'd gotten the bikes.

Donovan:

I told him I just bought them, fixed them up, and was planning on reselling them. So immediately, my brain just went into defense mode and I started making up a story trying to pretend to be innocent.

Shankar Vedantam:

And what went through your mind and your heart when you saw that you were surrounded by police, Donovan? What goes through your mind at that point? It must have been terrifying.

Donovan:

It was very terrifying. I think I knew that I had made a major mistake and I was raised to always tell the truth. Tell the truth, and it'll set me free. Naively, so I initially made up a story, but then I recounted on that, I do remember I did tell them I took the bikes after I waived my Miranda rights.

Shankar Vedantam:

And why did you do that, did you just feel like it was pointless or what was happening?

Donovan:

I actually did feel like it was pointless at that point because I thought to myself, my goodness, there's so many police here, this is clearly a sting operation of some sort, because how else would they know that these bikes are stolen?

Shankar Vedantam:

The police drove Donovan down to the station, snapped mugshots, booked and released him. His trial would come a few months later, but even before the trial, his life began to unravel.

Donovan:

My mugshot had been posted on this website for local crimes, and someone at the hospital who knew me must have seen this mugshot and then reported that to my manager. And my manager proceeded to send me an email claiming that, we have been notified that you were involved in a crime and you will be released from your work effective immediately. And I already had, my anxiety level being really high, thinking that it was a really terrible crime, and to know that it was on public display was even more traumatic in a lot of ways.

Shankar Vedantam:

Soon afterwards, Donovan received another blow. He had been about to start his Master's program. Coming up with ways to pay the tuition had been the driving force behind his desire to make a quick $400.

Donovan:

Just a few days later, I got a second email from the school that was associated with the hospital stating that, due to you being involved in a crime, we have decided to rescind our offer to your acceptance into our master's program. And this is all, again, before I had even really been convicted.

Shankar Vedantam:

The most ironic part: after he was arrested, Donovan reviewed his finances.

Donovan:

The crazy thing is that, I did a calculation and found that I had enough money for this down payment. So within the next couple of weeks, I actually ended up buying the house that I was originally having the problem with. So that was the great irony of it all, is that I actually did not need the money from these bicycles that I had stolen.

Shankar Vedantam:

As Donovan's trial approached, the prosecutor contacted James.

James Carter:

And he told me that because of the value of the bicycles, which wasn't a huge amount, but it was going to be grand larceny, which is a felony conviction.

Shankar Vedantam:

James was taken aback, he wanted Donovan held to account, but he didn't want him to have a felony conviction that would dog him for the rest of his life.

James Carter:

And so I spoke to them a bit about how in the UK we have the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, where if you commit a non-violent crime, after a certain time period, that is expunged from your record, no one can find it out unless you're applying as a spy or some top-level government job, it's not going to impact your ability to get a regular job. And so for me, it's important that once someone serves their time, that's it, they've done it, they've served their time, they made a mistake and they've served the punishment. For that to continue after either a fine or an imprisonment or whatever it is that the judge passes down seems counterproductive.

I wanted Donovan to be able to, once this was over and done with, get a job, pay taxes, and feed back into the system, be able to vote, all of those things that get taken away with a felony conviction. And so after a while, the prosecutor contacted me again, and if I remember correctly, they talked about how the sentence should have been 600 days, and what they were going to do, was suspend it down to 30 days and he would have to pay for the cost of his incarceration and it would be a misdemeanor.

Shankar Vedantam:

What did you tell the prosecutor?

James Carter:

Absolutely, go ahead, no hesitation whatsoever.

Shankar Vedantam:

And what happened next?

James Carter:

That was the last I heard of it.

Shankar Vedantam:

James' role in the legal process was over, but for Donovan, it was just beginning. He was convicted of petty larceny, paid a fine, and spent a month in jail. His conviction had been reduced from a felony to two misdemeanors, but that conviction was now a part of his criminal record. After his conviction, Donovan was able to rent out the rooms in his house, but he discovered that getting a job was not easy.

Donovan:

I started traveling around trying to look for little jobs, ironically, trying to apply to a Starbucks, trying to apply to different fitness areas, I think I applied to probably 20 different places over the coming year.

Shankar Vedantam:

Donovan could practically write the script for his job interviews, no matter where he went, the conversation unfolded the same way.

Donovan:

Everything on my resume looked great, I had really great references. But then to be upfront with them, I would say, my background check will show that I was convicted of these two misdemeanors. And you could see a change in their face showing that, it's for petty larceny, we can't allow that. So immediately, I would be denied.

Shankar Vedantam:

Donovan also realized that the conviction had consequences for his personal life. About a year after his release, his education plans stymied, his employment prospects dim. Donovan went to visit his partner for the weekend. He was a park ranger at Shenandoah National Park.

Donovan:

I was driving on Skyline Boulevard to come in to visit him to stay for the weekend and I had been going down one of the hills that are a little bit faster and wasn't paying attention, this was at eight o'clock at night when nobody else is in the park and I get pulled over. I did tell them that I was on probation, so then they asked me who I was visiting, I said, I'm visiting so-and-so down at the employee housing. So they said, we're going to call your probation officer. And in my head I'm thinking, they're just going to call a probation officer, this is all going to get taken care of, nothing's going to going to happen and I'm just going to go on to finish my weekend.

And before I know it, I see another park ranger vehicle coming my way, and then my partner steps out of the park ranger vehicle and I'm thinking, my gosh, they just called him. So then he says, I'm going to drive your vehicle back to employee housing, and even then, I still did not tell him I was so ashamed of these charges. So anyways, we get back to the employee housing and he says, let's go for a walk. And he says, dude, is there something that you need to tell me? I said, no, there's nothing I need to tell you. So then he says, well, I know about your charges and so then I broke down and explained to him, yes, I'm ashamed of this, this is something that happened a year and a half ago, so then I talked to him about that.

Shankar Vedantam:

But how did that affect your relationship going forward?

Donovan:

This affected him in a way that I think he felt like I was not telling him everything, I was being untruthful, which I was. It was an incredibly low point in my life, I would absolutely say that I thought of ending my life because this was total destruction of my view of how my career was going to go.

Shankar Vedantam:

James Carter knew nothing of what happened to Donovan, Donovan knew next to nothing about James, the courts and prosecutors did their work and moved on. But as I learned the details of what had happened, I couldn't help wondering if this was an example of justice being served, who exactly had it served? You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. For years after he recovered his stolen bike, James Carter remembered the incident as a moment of triumph.

James Carter:

It's been a story that I've told to friends at parties or to new people I've met, and someone said, you need to hear James' story about how he got his stolen bike back. And I was happy to tell that story because ultimately I felt that it was the best possible outcome at the end, and everyone carried on with their lives.

Shankar Vedantam:

I told James that Donovan had contacted Hidden Brain in response to a call-out for stories about being haunted by past events. I told him how Donovan's arrest led to his being fired from his job and how his graduate program had rescinded his offer of admission. I told him how Donovan had tried to find work after his conviction and how employer after employer turned him down because of his criminal record. James slowly absorbed what I told him, we were talking on Zoom, and he looked increasingly distraught.

James Carter:

I've gone quite a long time thinking that was handled in a certain way and you are telling me it wasn't. Is that correct?

Shankar Vedantam:

Yes, that is what I'm telling you.

James Carter:

Well, that sucks. That really does.

Shankar Vedantam:

I think I'm hearing you clearly say is, that was definitely not what you had intended.

James Carter:

No. It's heartbreaking. Had I known that would be the case, then ... I've gone all of this time thinking that what I felt is probably the best possible outcome from this case. And now I'm finding out that one of the primary things that I wanted to make sure didn't happen was what has ultimately taken place over this time period and it's gut-wrenching.

I'm trying to describe what it is that I'm feeling right now, and it is an immense sadness that I've gone all this time thinking that he served a short period of time and was then able to carry on with his life. And my goal of then not being a knock on societal cost has not been met in any way, shape, or form going forward. And I'm just hearing this for the first time after all these years and now I don't feel like the penalty that he's received was appropriate for his actions, and that's a horrible feeling.

Shankar Vedantam:

Are you experiencing guilt?

James Carter:

Yeah.

Shankar Vedantam:

Because, again, I don't think you did anything that was wrong, I don't think your actions can be questioned in any way.

James Carter:

Well, now I don't even know what my options would've been, what other approaches I could have taken, I feel guilty that my actions led to that.

Shankar Vedantam:

But I'm wondering if you were in conversation with Donovan right now, what would you tell him, James?

James Carter:

Right now, I'd want to say I'm sorry. It's haunted him for all this time, which part of my brain is telling me that that's a really ridiculous response to have. But he would not have been haunted by this, and I can't help but feel that part of that is my responsibility.

Shankar Vedantam:

James Carter is not the only one who feels this way. At the end of legal proceedings, many victims feel that what they received was not what they needed. Some scholars have pointed to a different model of justice called restorative justice. The goal here isn't just to meet our punishment, it's to try and heal the moral wound caused by an offense. It's a model where victims and perpetrators are not kept apart, they don't just interact through intermediaries but meet face-to-face. Each party takes turns speaking about the crime and its consequences. Victims may help decide on the punishment for the person who harm them. They often get answers and an apology. Offenders might receive reduced sentences.

Many states have passed laws permitting the use of restorative justice in some criminal cases as a way to reduce incarceration and as a more effective way of dealing with the emotional harms of both crime and punishment. A few days after I interviewed James, I invited both James and Donovan to join me for a joint interview on Zoom. They agreed. It was the first time they were seeing each other after their encounter outside the Starbucks. James went first, he told Donovan how his family was barely scraping by when Donovan stole his bike.

James Carter:

Certainly, when that bicycle was stolen, I knew that there was no way that I could afford to replace it. And it was an integral part of not just getting around campus for meetings and that sort of thing, but also it was a significant loss to our family, even though it's essentially just two wheels in a frame, it was far more than that.

Shankar Vedantam:

James also talked about how the theft shaped his larger feelings about his town.

James Carter:

That was the first time that I had experienced crime in Harrisonburg, and that changed my perception of what I felt was a very safe town.

Donovan:

James, just hearing your story, it makes me feel almost even more sorrowful that you felt uncomfortable in Harrisonburg and that you even had a family too. That's news to me, and it's hard for me to hear that bike meant so much to you emotionally and that it had memories. So I actually hadn't even thought about if it was an important bike to someone, because I did think it was abandoned.

Shankar Vedantam:

Donovan told James about his precarious financial situation when he stole the bike, how he was about to start grad school and would have to cut back on his work hours. He also told James what it felt like to pull off the crime.

Donovan:

After I had taken the bike, I still felt guilty, the whole time, even going to the Starbucks to meet you, I remember thinking, my goodness, this is going to solve this problem really quickly, but also this feels awful at the same time, I think I remember feeling pretty bad.

Shankar Vedantam:

Donovan told James how quickly his life unraveled after his arrest.

Donovan:

It was incredibly embarrassing that my mugshot was circulated around my coworkers that I really got along really well with, and I was very involved in the community. So then I felt like, my goodness, my face has been seen everywhere, I need to get out of this town, even though I had just bought a house. So I was in a very, very, very dark place. As dark as it gets. Feeling like there was no future for myself.

Shankar Vedantam:

I'm wondering, James, if you might be able to tell Donovan what your reaction is to his account of what happened to him after the arrest. How is that sitting with you right now? What are you hearing? What are your feelings towards Donovan?

James Carter:

I felt a tremendous amount of sorrow and regret. I've been trying to process this and understand that actually my actions and the decisions I made to pursue charges have had some very real and very unexpected long-term impacts on yourself that have ultimately gone completely the opposite way of every intention that I had.

As I now think back to it, should I have dropped the charges? All of this time, Donovan and I have had no interaction whatsoever and have drawn our own conclusions about who that person is and why they did those things. But to hear that the decisions that I made after getting that bike back had such a detrimental impact on someone was deeply troubling to me.

Donovan:

It's painful for me to hear that. And listening to how you approached going about this case with the prosecutor, that is not at all the story that I heard on my side. I heard actually quite the opposite. I heard from my lawyer that, this guy, it sounds like he would like a pretty high sentence for you.

Shankar Vedantam:

The thing that I think makes me sad, is that I feel like the conversation we are having now should have been a conversation that the two of you had nine years ago, and it seems sad to me that conversation didn't happen.

Donovan:

Absolutely. And also, it's unfortunate because if you and I had gotten a chance to make amends, I would've even wanted to give you the bikes back in a more repaired state than you had actually had them. And then also, I would've probably wanted to pay you as some type of payment of sorry. I would've felt incredibly sorrowful to you. And it's something that I had never even thought of before because I was told from my lawyer that you were quite the different character than what is being described to me in this interview.

Shankar Vedantam:

I'm wondering, Donovan, if that opportunity had presented itself nine years ago, and in fact there had basically been some forum where James could have been assured that his safety and the safety of his family was not in jeopardy, and you could have been assured that this was a forum in which you were not necessarily going to be tarred and feathered, but it was basically a chance for the two of you to talk.

In some ways, what I'm suggesting is actually not a radical idea because, of course, in interpersonal settings, certainly if you have kids, this happens all the time, someone does something wrong to your kid, your kid does something wrong to somebody else. And what do we do? We don't basically say, separate the two parties so that they don't talk to each other for the next eight years. We actually get them together in a room and basically say, let's talk about what happened, and let each party basically express what happened to them and have some sense of closure. And I'm wondering if that opportunity had been provided to you, Donovan, at the time, what would you have said to James?

Donovan:

James, I would've said I'm very sorry for--this was my situation, and I have a lot of stress going on and it was an impulsive decision that I felt nervous and anxious about even during the decision. And it was a one-off decision, I have nothing on my record before this, and this is what I was planning on doing with the money, it was just a means to an end, essentially.

And I'm very sorry for this impact that I have on you immediately, I didn't realize that it was one of your only forms of transportation, and I didn't realize that you had a family. In my mind, you were just a man who had a bicycle that maybe potentially worked at JMU, that was the only idea in my head of who you were. I would've wanted to make things right immediately because I am the one who did something wrong.

James Carter:

I don't remember if you recall, Donovan, but you emailed one of the accounts that I set up that evening to apologize, and you mentioned that you were trying to save up for a house and that was the reason that you stole my bike. And at the time, I myself was struggling financially and so it was hurtful to receive that message to say that, I took something of yours because I wanted something. And that made an impression on me as to the type of person that you are, and that's what I formed my understanding of who Donovan is. And to go through the last nine years of my life believing that was the case, only to hear the decisions that I made have had such a negative impact on you was deeply troubling for me.

And I've spoken to different friends over the last few days, and they all had different approaches to it. Some were, well, that guy had everything coming to him, to that's really sad that you wanted this to be a case of someone having a fresh start, but that's not what's happened. So I've had the opportunity to talk it through to people and it's very interesting how people's opinions vary based upon their background.

Shankar Vedantam:

And James, I'm wondering if this forum had presented itself nine years ago, and you'd heard Donovan basically say to you what he just said, how do you think you might have responded?

James Carter:

I think I would've certainly have liked to have relayed to Donovan the meaning that that bicycle had to me. That, while it wasn't just an asset, it was also the memories had been formed with it that you could never get back with a new bicycle. So yes, there was a financial side to it, but also there were a lot of experiences that were tied in with that bicycle. There was no way of getting those back.

And so I think that was part of the driving force, was the, yes, I definitely can't afford to buy a new bike to replace it, but also this is my family's bike. So I think I would've certainly wanted you to have understood the implications, that it wasn't just purely a financial thing, but also there was a deeply emotional side to losing that. And so while it is, in the grand scheme of things, a minor crime, when you experience it yourself personally, that does alter your perception of things.

Shankar Vedantam:

In previous centuries, when people clashed, they settled scores with their fists or with vigilante justice. A great accomplishment of our modern legal system is that it limits cycles of violence. Bloody feuds that last generations are now a thing of the past. But in return for turning human disputes into orderly proceedings, courts sometimes sacrifice the emotional dimensions of crime and punishment. People who are wronged don't just want perpetrators to be punished, many want an acknowledgement of the harms done to them. They want offenders to truly understand the harm they have caused, they want apologies that are heartfelt, not coerced. When victims and perpetrators get to see one another as three-dimensional human beings instead of caricatures, it becomes easier for everyone to move on with their lives, isn't that what justice is supposed to do?

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media, our audio production team includes Bridget McCarthy, Annie Murphy Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, and Andrew Chadwick. Tara Boyle is our executive producer, I'm Hidden Brain's Executive editor. Working on this episode made us realize there is another psychological dimension to the story which we might explore in a new episode. Can you remember a time when you hurt someone, perhaps sideswiped another car and left without leaving a note? Or took something important from another person, but were never caught or punished? Perhaps the guilt about what you did has stayed with you for many years. If you have a personal story like that and are willing to share it with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a short voice memo on your phone telling us what happened and what you wish you could say to the person you hurt, and email it to us @[email protected], use the subject line: guilty.

Our unsung hero this week is listener and Hidden Brain supporter, Lori Hackney. Lori lives in Oregon and likes to listen to Hidden Brain while taking her morning walk. She writes, my all-time favorite episode of the podcast was Laughter the Best Medicine. While my brain learned something new from every episode I listen to, the Laughter episode had me laughing throughout while learning something new about the benefits of laughter, it was a hoot to listen to. Thanks so much for sharing that, Lori, and thanks as well for your support of the show, we truly appreciate it.

If you enjoyed this episode, if stories like this make you think and reflect on your own life, please help us build more episodes like this, join Lori and support our work. You can do so at support.hiddenbrain.org, that site again is, support.hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantam, see you soon.