Maybe Oscar should walk?

I remember when I was a kid, I loved playing paintball. I wasn't any good at it. But I loved it.

The combination of fear and adrenaline really fuelled my passion for the game. I convinced most of my mates to have paintball birthday parties just so I could shoot them all.

At one of these parties my best mate Barrett and I were on the same team having the time of our lives; laughing, screaming and playing silly buggers.

This fun was short lived because before we knew it the enemy was shooting at us and we were trapped. In all the panic and confusion my gun went off and I shot Barrett in the back at point blank range.

This scared me more than it hurt him.

He was convinced that I had shot him on purpose and refused to talk to me for weeks.

There was no way I could prove to him that I had shot him accidentally because I was scared and I panicked.

Those three weeks were the worst weeks of my life.

Now I'm not comparing Oscar's situation to mine. Killing someone is way worse than shooting someone with a paintball. But the feeling of being blamed for something you didn't mean is the same.

I can't even imagine how horrible the several months have been for him, IF it was truly a mistake.

Just like everyone else, at the time I was all for him going to jail and ran around the streets screaming “let him hang”. Not once did I put myself in his shoes.

Can you imagine if your parents had grounded you for a month for that window you broke while playing cricket?

If this all was just a big mistake and he really did think it was an intruder and he didn't mean to kill anyone, then those months already served were too long.