In 2003, a Harvard student stabbed 18 year-old Michael Colono to death in Cambridge. The press went crazy about it because it was like good Harvard boy gone bad, I can remember so many details about this guy. His parents were divorced. His mother was an attorney in Colorado. He lived in Somerville, and that night had decided to walk home from a bar in Cambridge. He drank Jim Beam. He had been hanging out with 2 women earlier in the evening, and done the gentlemanly thing by seeing them off in a cab. I remember his name, although I won’t use it here, because as far as I’m concerned this person is not human and doesn’t deserve the courtesy of being thought of like a human.

But the information about Michael Colono was slow to come. So slow. I remember just wanting to know anything about him. I can remember picking up pieces here and there, that he had a young daughter and I think he worked as a cook. But the press told us other stuff about him, I think he had been picked up by police once or twice for fighting or something relatively minor.

But why did we need to know the victim had past experiences with police? How did that matter when he - unarmed, sitting in a car, with his friends - was the one who was killed? And why did we need to know the family story of the assailant? The killer was older, taller, heavier, and carrying a concealed lethal weapon - not just a small switch-blade, but a large knife. All the victim did was laugh at how drunk this random pedestrian was, and I guess the killer felt like a big man and was so offended by being the butt of an inoffensive joke that he killed an 18 year-old.

I hate to take away the focus from human life, but just imagine if the killer had been the young Latino father, and the murdered was the one who was the white Harvard student. Whose backstory would we have heard about in the news? Honestly.

Anyway, this case had faded from my consciousness, until I happened to catch the news today (bolded words are my own emphasis):

…admitted to stabbing Colono with a 4 1/2-inch knife and was sentenced to two years and one day in state prison.

With 290 days served since the April 12, 2003, death of Colono, the 29-year-old Colorado native is expected to be imprisoned about a year, authorities said.

So since he has already suffered almost a year in prison after killing an unarmed innocent man unprovoked in cold blood, he’ll probably have to spend about another year in there. And he won’t simply be eligible for parole. He will be released.

It’s hard to know exactly what I feel about this. I long ago abandoned faith in the judicial system, so it’s not a surprise at all that he gets a slap on the wrist. But it still saddens me. Again, picture that the roles were switched, that the young Latino father had killed the white Harvard student and tell me if he would have gotten two years. I don’t think I’m “playing the race card” (or whatever you libertarians call it) by pointing that out.

It’s not that I advocate for more people to spend more time in prison. That’s not me.

What hurts is that the sentence clearly shows that the courts never considered Michael Colono a human being. Not to make the obvious comparison, but Michael Vick killed his dogs and got 23 months. This Harvard student killed a man, who was a father, a lover, a brother and son, and got 24 months.

Plenty of people made comments that Vick’s sentence wasn’t harsh enough. Maybe we’ll see a similar chorus singing for Michael Colono’s family.

But we probably won’t.