The US president could learn a lot from a juror who refused to accept that past injustices could not be addressedKathleen Hawk Norman was appointed forewoman, and led the charge as the jury imposed a death sentence for Daniel Bright III in 1996. The case seemed open and shut, and the entire penalty phase was over by lunchtime. It was an awful act; the worse because Bright turned out to be innocent.
Hawk Norman died unexpectedly last Thursday night, aged 54. Her obituary could teach President Barack Obama a thing or two.
When it comes to another tragic mistake – the recent predilection for torture – Obama tells the world that we should "look forward, not backwards". It is not the fault of the CIA agents, the argument goes, that they followed the law as the White House lawyers described it. Even though they might have wondered whether abusing prisoners was wrong, they were just doing as they were told, and we should not hound them now. For the security of the nation, the CIA must be allowed to get on with its job.
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Sad to say, Obama is afraid that if he looks too closely at the people who got us into this mess, he'll lose a lot of friends. Had Hawk Norman taken Obama's line, Bright might still be on death row. I well remember the first time I met her: she was aghast that the government might have misled her. The FBI hid a statement that not only exculpated Bright, but identified the real killer. From that day forward, she knew she could not move forward until she had looked closely at her past – why had this happened? How could she set it right?
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/20/torture-cia-barack-obama1 
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