Her brother’s killer may have been the one locked up, but Angel Wendt was still in prison.
The teacher was boiling over with rage, guilt and hopelessness. Even though Lee Namtvedt — the drunk driver who killed her brother Michael in 2010 — was serving a 10-year prison sentence, Wendt couldn’t seem to move on with her life. So she tried something a little unorthodox: She met with Namtvedt.
“We sat and talked for hours and hours and I found myself crying but it wasn’t for me,” Wendt told CBS News. “It was for him.”
Wendt and Namtvedt were one of three cases from the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Restorative Justice Project that were profiled on a 60 Minutes segment last Sunday. CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley (whose pronunciation of “WES-konsin” makes my ears hurt) explained that the program was started over 30 years ago as a way to teach criminal justice students about the needs of victims. And it turns out a whole lot of victims just want a sense of closure.“I felt like the only emotion that this man deserved was hate,” says Angel Wendt, whose brother was killed by a drunk driver. Wendt says she came to regret focusing her hate on the driver, Lee Namtvedt. https://t.co/RVnVYOeef9 pic.twitter.com/fA879AQrno
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 12, 2019
“Many people are hungry for information,” says program director Jonathan Scharrer, “so finding out what really happened helps them stop asking the questions that they may have asked themselves, you know, 10, 20, 30,000 times.”
Speaking to Wisconsin Public Radio last year, State Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) elaborated on the opportunities for rehabilitation that restorative justice creates. A former public defender, Taylor is a vocal advocate for the program.At the victim’s request, The Restorative Justice Project begins the process of setting up a meeting between a victim and a prisoner. If the prisoner is also willing, the project will visit both parties https://t.co/BmEKTgvSeC pic.twitter.com/aeVA85IZEZ
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 12, 2019
“It gives us accountability to offenders that they don’t normally have,” she said, “at a depth that I think awakens their humanity.”
Lee Namtvedt, for example, was able to live with himself again after speaking to Angel Wendt. And Mary Rezin got the man who shot and killed her brother to admit to it for the first time. But the story of Jackie Millar is especially moving.Craig Sussek was 16 when he shot Jackie Millar in the head as he and another teenager were stealing her car. Millar survived, and wanted to understand why Sussek shot her. https://t.co/96saTOrhRv pic.twitter.com/YxULXsjNtE
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 12, 2019
In 1995, Millar was shot and blinded by then-teenager Craig Sussek during a robbery. Two years after Sussek was sentenced, Millar met with him in prison to ask why he would do something so horrible to her. Sussek spoke emotionally and honestly, and Millar forgave him. She even said he wasn’t a bad kid — in fact, she was proud of him.
“Without that, I don’t know where I’d be,” recalls Sussek, now 40.
Now Millar visits Sussek each year, even as her health is deteriorating. Somehow, a heinous crime has led to a sort of camaraderie between victim and offender. The same goes for Wendt and Namtvedt. In fact, Wendt set up the meeting in part because she wanted to apologize to her brother’s killer.Two years after being shot in the head and suffering brain trauma, Jackie Millar met with the shooter, Craig Sussek, in prison. “I’m really sorry for everything I’ve done,” Sussek told Millar https://t.co/z0fqiFca7z pic.twitter.com/thp9BieRKm
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 13, 2019
“He and I were both mourning the loss of the same amazing young man,” Wendt says. “But I have all the beautiful memories to fall back on when I’m feeling sad. He has nothing.”
Jonathan Scharrer will appear on CNN’s “The Redemption Project with Van Jones” on May 26 at 8 p.m. You can watch the full “60 Minutes” segment now at CBS.com.Five years after her brother was killed, Angel Wendt went to the prison to meet the drunk driver who killed him. Wendt forgave him. Then surprisingly, she asked for his forgiveness. “He and I were both mourning the loss of the same amazing young man.” https://t.co/Oyp8kkegIn pic.twitter.com/mb7HPRmgi2
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 12, 2019
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