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One Mother’s Quest

Moreland, Rachel Miller
June 4, 2015

Source: (2004) A Common Place (Mennonite Central Committee). July/August. 10(4): 4-5.

In 1993 Latrice Floyd’s son Seth was murdered in a Pennsylvania jail while incarcerated for a drug-related crime. Shawn Burton, also incarcerated at the same jail for a drug-related offense, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder. Ten years after the killing, the Pennsylvania Mediation Program for Victims of Violent Crime arranged for Latrice Floyd and Shawn Burton to meet in a Pennsylvania state prison to talk. (While Burton maintains his innocence of the murder itself, he admits complicity in knowing about the plan to murder Seth Floyd.) This article recounts the crime and its effects on Floyd and Burton, as well as the feelings they experienced as a consequence of their mediated victim-offender dialogue.

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