Rick Lessard was known to drink too much and let his temper show. Those closest to him tried to lead him onto a better path and away from his demons, but their efforts failed.

These details, and many others, have been debated about Lessard, a known rapscallion with a rap sheet, much more than about his accused killer, Sergio Hairston. Details of the case against Hairston are skimpy, but his apparent motive, according to police, is a drug-related $250 debt.

In the days after Lessard’s death, there’s been a sentiment expressed that he merely got what was coming to him because of who he was, like some kind of cosmic punishment. Or, some others have observed, the real villain in this drama is the rough neighborhood that sired both Lessard and his alleged killer.

Both couldn’t be further from the truth. Nobody deserves such a fate, and killing another person is a mournful failing that’s purely human in origin, an unconscionable action made often in passion’s heat, or with the coldest of blood. Lessard, who can’t defend himself, has become easy to judge.

Like Melissa Mendoza, whose character was attacked repeatedly in an Auburn courtroom during the three-week trial of her former lover, and now convicted killer, Daniel Roberts.

Mendoza – the mother of Roberts’ child – was shot, execution-style, in the back of the head in August 2005. His defense characterized Mendoza as a “freight train,” despite the testimony of a forensic investigator saying this allegedly crazed woman was killed while carrying her purse and a soda.

A jury convicted Roberts in mere hours on Tuesday, a laudable testament to the inability of rational thinking to blame an innocent victim for putting the machine of her demise into motion.

In a recent column, writer Cal Thomas posited that America has become a “nation of gawkers,” obsessed with the obscure details of our favorite train wrecks, and referenced the highly publicized mental breakdown of a fading starlet, and the untimely death of a long-ago centerfold, as examples that have created lush public fodder.

The same could be said about the lives of Mendoza and Lessard.

Their stories are compelling only by their tragedy. One family has their justice, while the other’s wait is beginning. Children have lost parents, siblings have lost a brother or sister, and parents have lost a beloved child. Their lives have been framed, unjustly, by their violent ends.

Yet their lives have been thumbed and appraised like auction items, in a morbid examination for some kind of explanation for their imperiled existence.

It’s callous to believe, however, this kind of cursory attention can possibly assess the full value, or enhance an understanding, of anyone’s life.

Unfortunately, the harsh glare of public attention also makes this easy to forget.