Better in their words…

By SOHRAB AHMARI

The massacre at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater has left at least a dozen innocents dead. This weekend also happens to mark the one-year anniversary of the Breivik massacre in Norway. As Coloradans, along with the rest of the nation, come to grips with the Aurora killing, there is much to learn from the Norwegians about how to confront evil—and how not to.

I spent most of a day at the trial of Anders Behring Breivik in May. The Oslo district court that day was surrounded by Norwegian special-forces officers armed with submachine guns. The entrance to the courthouse was blocked by a security cordon, its railings decorated with white flowers and Norwegian flags. Passersby would invariably stop by this make-shift memorial. Some shook their heads in silence; others visibly teared up. Then they moved on.

Inside, the court was busy identifying some of the 69 youth whose lives Breivik took as he rampaged through Utøya island, about 25 miles northwest of Oslo. (Breivik also detonated a bomb in Oslo’s government quarter, killing another eight.) I watched these proceedings in an adjacent room with a videolink and live English translation for the foreign press. What I witnessed made for one of the most disturbing experiences of my life.

A forensic investigator, Superintendent Gøran Dyvesveen, would describe the location on the island where each victim was shot and where the body was found. A forensic pathologist would then detail the injuries suffered by the victim, using a mannequin to demonstrate the trajectory and impact of each bullet. Finally a lawyer for the victim’s family would make a short statement about his or her life accompanied by a photo of the victim.

“Sharidyn Meegan Ngahiwi Svebakk-Boehn was shot near the lover’s path on the island,” Superintendent Dyvesveen summarized in one case. Then his pathologist colleague used a pointer to mark entrance and exit wounds on the gray mannequin representing her body. “The victim suffered two shots,” the pathologist said. “Both entered the left shoulder, then went through the left lung, and penetrated the aorta. One bullet was lodged in the chest, the other passed through the liver.” Then this: “Sharidyn died from these shots, which caused immediate unconsciousness and rapid death.” This victim was 14. She had dreamt of becoming a fashion designer, the court heard from her parents’ statement.

They added, “We are so proud that she chose us to be her parents.”

The emotional presentations did not disrupt the court’s decorum. Yet everyone—including the chief judge, the police investigators and pathologists, even the bailiffs and jaded European reporters sharing the room with me—was affected. Everyone, that is, except the killer himself. A vile smirk would occasionally cross Breivik’s lips when the courtroom camera cut to his profile. But otherwise he sat quiet, his arms crossed defiantly. This was markedly different from his behavior on the island, where, as one survivor testified, Breivik could be heard screaming boisterously—”Oh, wow! Oh, wow!”—as he murdered teenagers.

There was something very dignified about all of this. Breivik’s guilt was established beyond the shadow of a doubt; he readily confessed to his crimes. The point of these proceedings was to officially and in the name of the court memorialize the lives that could have been had Breivik not cut them short.

The Norwegians are a famously austere people, not prone to emotional outbursts. The trial of their greatest mass murderer reflects the Norwegian national character.

“Every single person who’s dead needs to be presented,” Shabana Rehman Gaarder, a Pakistani-Norwegian comedian and writer who has been covering the trial, told me. “Norwegians are not giving Breivik one single feeling. They’re not looking at him, they’re not showing even a tiny bit of their anger. It’s a proud way to say to Breivik, ‘You don’t exist.'”

The Norwegian way of justice has its limits, too. “You Americans could never handle a trial like this,” a German television reporter sneered at me during a smoke break. Like many Europeans, he looked down at the U.S. justice system for its supposed violence, including the persistence of the death penalty here.

But then it’s worth remembering that the maximum sentence the court can impose on Breivik under Norwegian law is 21 years, with the possibility of renewing his detention if it’s later determined that he remains a public danger.

Norwegian prisons are often described as the world’s nicest. And as the London Telegraph reported in May, prison officials may even hire outside “friends” to keep Breivik company. Norwegian law holds that no prisoner—not even Breivik—should ever find himself in total isolation. That would be too cruel.

All this sounds outrageous—and it is. Norwegian society has advanced so far down the path of “humaneness” that it cannot put someone like Breivik to death, let alone jail him for life. It’s a society that can only deal with evil on clinical and judicial terms, not moral ones. That sensibility has never sat well with Americans, but it’s increasingly making inroads among us. The very term “evil” sounds old-fashioned. But that’s exactly what Breivik and the Colorado killer represent.

Mr. Ahmari is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal this summer. Sohrab Ahmari: Mass Murder and Evil—From Oslo, Norway to Aurora, Colo. – WSJ.com.