Credit: Dangerous Minds / New York City Police Department / Original Scans

The murder of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman is a tragedy that few others will match for the sheer grief and shock it wrought upon the world.

Yes, there have been events that shook the world in more consequential ways than the shooting of a 40-year-old pop singer outside the New York City hotel he lived in. Emotionally, however, there have been a few that come close.

The idea that arguably the most famous man on the planet could be taken from us, seemingly at the point he was due to make a spectacular comeback, after putting a decade of bitterness and healing behind him, for no reason at all, did terminal damage to the world’s psyche.

There’s an argument to be made that it’s damaged we still haven’t healed from. The Beatles are still one of the most popular entertainment institutions on the planet, let alone music acts, and a part of that mania must come from the fact that we could have gotten decades more music from John Lennon, even possibly a Beatles reunion. Yet the mania and entitlement of one thoroughly mediocre man put a full stop on his and his band’s legacy, no matter how many AI-assisted “new songs” they put out.

To me, one of the biggest signs that we as a culture haven’t moved on from the death of John Lennon is the outcry whenever Chapman applies for parole. He’s technically been eligible for parole since 2000 and has spent the following two and a half decades applying for it. Every time he does feels a little more like a slap in the face than the last, and the question does remain, why? After all, it was a murder committed 40 years ago, and his time in jail ever since has been relatively stable.

Let’s be real, people have committed worse crimes than Chapman and received parole.

So, why does paroling Chapman feel so wrong?

To be clear, this is a sentiment I completely agree with. The man took John Lennon from us for no other reason than because it would make him famous. It didn’t even have to be Lennon, just someone of Lennon’s level of fame. He can rot for all I care, but I understand the nuances involved.

One hopes that the justice system would see things a little more evenly. That is, after all, what it’s there for. Yet, looking into the reasons that the New York Court systems have denied him parole 14 times in a row, it goes beyond simply who he killed and more into how he feels about killing him. Put simply, the courts feel that while Chapman can say all the right things about how much guilt he feels for his actions, they didn’t believe he genuinely feels remorse for it.

Without that remorse, there’s every reason to believe that Chapman could kill again. Or, at the very least, that releasing him would set a precedent for release that would see many dangerous individuals released on parole. No matter how many times he tells the courts that he did what he did because he was in a dark place and wanted to matter to the world, those courts still have to believe that he feels genuine remorse for his actions. That remorse is what other people accused of similar crimes have to feel in order to have a chance at being granted parole.

Are they right to make that call? Only Chapman can say. However, I think anyone who may be weeping for Chapman to be given another chance (and you never know, they may be out there) is hugely outweighed by people who feel he’s exactly where he belongs. I can’t help but agree with them.