Every once in a while you see a story like this and you wonder. I'd like to think it couldn't happen here, but this took place in Washington State, not Alabama:
At the very end of last year, Shaun Goodman left a bar in Olympia, Washington in his Ferrari and led police on a high speed chase that approached 100 mph at times before crashing into two cars, jumping the curb and eventually careening into the side of a house. An unsuspecting passenger who had accepted a ride from Goodman was forced to leap from the moving car as it slowed down approaching an intersection.
Police arrested Goodman, whose blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit in Washington. He pleaded guilty to felony charges of eluding a police officer and driving under the influence, his seventh DUI conviction. And last week, Judge James Dixon handed down his sentence: no jail time and one year in a work release program.
Members of the community are crying foul, and argue that criminals who have money play by a different set of rules than others who commit similar crimes, drawing comparisons to several other recent cases of wealthy defendants getting off with minimal punishment. On Friday, protesters gathered in front of the Thurston County courthouse to demand answers.
“The judge has said at some point that he’s an important businessman in the community, and it wouldn’t be fair for him (and) his employees would suffer if he went to real jail,” said Sam Miller in an interview with local station KOMO News. “And my question is, what about the people that might suffer if he kills somebody?”
via Think Progress
The article reminds us of a couple of other recent cases, including the kid who got away with murder based on a plea of affluenza:
Last year, a teenager who killed four people and injured two others by driving drunk in Texas avoided jail after the lawyer hired by his wealthy parents claimed their son suffered from “affluenza,” an infliction suffered by the extremely wealthy that prevents them from accepting any responsibility for their own actions. And in March, an heir to chemical magnate Irénée du Pont who raped his own three-year-old daughter accepted a plea bargain that reduced his charges to fourth-degree rape and received probation, avoiding a mandatory jail sentence of 10 years. In her decision, the judge in that case explained that the defendant “will not fare well” in jail.
I can understands the judge's reasons for not sending the rapist to jail. If he wasn't going to fare well there, then what would be the point? Any number of my homeless disability clients have ended up in jail for the crime (usually) of being mentally ill, but it's all been for the best, for to a man, if asked, they will tell you how well they fared there. That's why so many poor people are clamoring to get into our penal institutions. And as to affluenza, someone ought to tell Paul Ryan about it, because apparently poor people never catch it, meaning they are all perfectly capable of accepting responsibility for their own actions, which seems to run against the grain of what Paul has been saying in other contexts. Affluenza must be highly contagious among the unfortunate .01% however, since the government has apparently concluded that all the bankers and hedge fund managers have it.
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