Present Day

The police department normally frowned on the new form of punishment that a few judges had started handing out. The prisons were overwhelmed, and while the private prison industrial complex tried to keep up with the demand, changes had to be made.

Decades ago, the first psychic punishment had been carried out purely by accident. In the middle of a Louisiana courtroom, an angry mother had gotten her hands on the defendant, her daughter’s murderer, a man who was about to go free.

The man had, in a fit of rage, broken into her daughter’s and his ex’s home, beating her to death. Local law enforcement had botched the case early on, not properly securing the crime scene. They had presumed she was a prostitute and the encounter had been a job for her gone wrong. The crime scene was robbed and what little the police had as evidence just barely justified for a trial.

Due to the mistakes made early on, everyone felt the murderer would go free. The vicitm’s mother knew without a doubt that the man was responsible for the loss of her daughter. How did she know? Her daughter had told her.

Their family had always had abilities, largely hidden to avoid any scrutiny. The night before the trial had started, her daughter had come to her in a dream, telling her just what had happened to her, begging for vengeance. She would not deny her daughter her last wish, or what she deserved.

Closing arguments, and the murderer was most likely going to go free, not even looking concerned for the outcome of his trial, assured by his lawyer that no bad would come to him. Today, the mother had reached her limit, she couldn’t trust the justice system to get vengeance for her daughter, she would have to get it herself. She lunged forward, grabbing the man’s arm from the front row, her blue-gray eyes turning to the light brown of her daughter’s. Her daughter’s spirit entered her, seeking the vengeance she had demanded.

The daughter’s spirit pushed all of her fear, all of her pain and all of her anger and hatred into the man, forcing him to experience what he had put her through. The murderer screamed in fear, shaking, trembling and terrified. He collapsed to his knees, losing control of himself out of terror.

“I killed her,” he screamed, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” He screamed for all of the courtroom to hear. He babbled nonsense as his victim’s mother finally released him from her hold, her eyes returning to normal.

She sat down, exhausted from what had just happened. Never before had someone channeled the spirit of a dead victim into the victim’s killer, at least not in modern times. The murderer’s mind was shattered from being forced to feel just what he had done. He ended up institutionalized, forced to spend the rest of his days fully knowing how it had felt to be beaten to death. His victim, though, with justice paid, was able to rest peacefully despite how brutally her life had been forcefully ended.

The punishment the man had received made national and global news. Some called for the mother to be punished for her actions, while others praised her for her actions. There was a call for criminal justice reform, demands to add this act as a form of punishment for murderers. Life in prison, death penalty, or psychic justice.

After decades of debate, the punishment was finally allowed to be used, though the psychics or mediums who had this ability would be required to get law enforcement training. There would also be limits, as it was considered inhumane to destroy a criminal’s mind, no matter what they may have carried out against others.