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Dear Judge Chamblee,

I am Joseph Peter Sawyer. I am 12 years old and Patrick Sawyer’s second oldest son. My papa was killed by Shane McGee. I think that Shane McGee should be punished for it, and I hope that he won’t come out from his punishment just being worse than before. I hope that his punishment could make him become better than he was before. If not that, then he should have to do good for the community with community service or something like that so that it’s not just that he killed my Papa and gets put in jail and then come out and just lives his life like before that or worse.

When my papa died, that was so much bad and horrible that I can’t describe it to you just with this letter. Because that was so horrible, we don’t need more bad to come from it by just making Shane McGee be punished. Because my papa’s life was taken away, so was half of mine. When Shane McGee comes out of prison he still gets to have the rest of his life. I don’t think that sending him to prison would be pointless, because he does need to be punished somehow and the rest of the world needs to know that it’s not okay to drink and drive like he did.

My papa meant so much to me and all my family and extended family. We all meant so much to him. My papa was help to the community and help to all my family. He was into sports like paddling and he would always try to help anyone who wanted to get into paddling. He tried to get people into it. If Shane McGee hadn’t killed him, but killed someone else close to him, I can’t see Papa hating Shane McGee for that. I don’t think he would want him to go to prison for the rest of his life.

I think that Papa would want to meet Shane McGee and see what he is like and Papa would try to get him to become a better person. I can see him trying to maybe teach Shane McGee to paddle and not just hate him. So, that being said, because Shane killed him, I think that he should be punished how my papa would like him to. Of course, we don’t know exactly how he’d like him to since he killed him.

My papa was nice to everybody and he even would act like a father to my cousins who lost their father when they were very young while still being a father to me and my siblings and a husband to my mama and a friend to all his friends.

Before he died, Papa was about to graduate from nursing school and then he’d be able to find a job again and we’d be able to move to our own house and live together. We’ve been living with my grandparents for the last 3 years because Papa lost his previous job as a bricklayer because of an injury to his elbow. We were excited to be our own family again. Now none of that can happen because he was killed before he could graduate.

Joseph P. Sawyer