Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.

The media and the world seems to be whipped into a furor over the dog fighting charges that have been leveled against Michael Vick, charges that he will plead guilty to sometime in the coming weeks.

Dog fighting is a cruel and inhumane spectacle of animals at their basest level. Dogs bred and raised solely to fight and kill one another at the prompting and glee of people who seem to have no soul. For anyone who disagrees with me - go watch the movie Amores Perros - from the acclaimed director Alejandro González Iñárritu. As disturbing as dog fighting is to those of us who have never been directly confronted with it, we must accept that dog fighting is a sad fact of life in most of the inner cities. Why? It's a good question but outside the scope of this article.

But a quote from the movie haunts me, "Being tough won't make you smart." This quote digs at the heart of the Michael Vick case. For Vick we could say, "Being rich, talented, and tough won't make you smart," and it didn't. Michael Vick, like so many other young people who go on to make criminal mistakes, could not extract himself from the environment which shaped his upbringing.

Think about the adolescent who is abused by his alcoholic father and goes on to be an alcoholic abuser himself. It happens every day. Relapse is the reality of a majority of recidivistic offenders: drunk drivers, addicts, sex offenders, and domestic abusers - in America we give people a second chance despite the fact the numbers hint at the fact that some of them will do it again.

I personally know a man who killed 3 people, a mother, father, and three year old little girl, an infant in the car lived, in a drunk driving accident. My friend ruined the lives of an entire family, along with his own life. He broke the hearts of his parents, wrecked his budding career, lost everything he had, and ultimately received 18 months in prison. My initial reaction was: "he got lucky." Did he? He made a mistake and he will live with that fact his stupid decision killed three people, for the rest of his life.

Looking in from the outside, putting myself in his shoes, I would hope for a second chance. We all make mistakes, Michael Vick included. We must trust in others to make good on their indiscretions of the past. We must trust that Michael Vick is a good person with the ability to grow as a person despite his heinous acts; as Americans we must allow him a chance at redemption.