http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/12/12/3053821/teen-killed-sentenced-probation-testimony-suffers-affluenza/
On June 15, an intoxicated drive around town by several North Texas teens ended with four dead and at least two others critically injured. The driver, 16-year-old Ethan Couch, stole beer from a Wal-Mart before speeding his pick-up truck with seven passengers down a dark rural road, and ramming into four pedestrians attending to a broken down car.
Prosecutors sought the maximum 20-year sentence for Couch. But after Couch pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter, he wassentenced to 10 years probation and no jail time. Instead, he will spend time in a long-term, inpatient rehabilitation center in Southern California,after his father agreed to pay the $450,000-per-year bill. If he violates probation, he could spend ten years in jail. But the sentence is nonetheless a deviation from other recent punishments in Texas for similar crimes, all of which had a smaller death toll.
another American staple gets pulled out, some people are above the law and money can buy you out of a murder charge. there is no lesson learned or penitence paid pops paying the rent he will have the run of the place and liberty to do whatever.
Miller said Couch has a mantra of, “if it feels good, do it,” stemming from a childhood without parental role models or rules. “He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way,” Miller said. “He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle.”He said his divorced parents had a contentious relationship. His father “does not have relationships, he takes hostages,” and his mother used her son as a tool to manipulate the father, according to the Forth Worth Star-Telegram.In agreeing to his father’s proposal, District Judge Jean Boyd reasoned that the California facility would provide better treatment than juvenile treatment centers in Texas. Boyd told Couch during sentencing that it was he, and not his parents, who was responsible for this accident, and told the victims there was nothing she could do to lessen their pain.
wonder how much went to the judge, this is why they fight so hard to keep status quo they control their fate how ever f'd up it is with a dollar bill buying justice and gov't whats next the sun?
But the victims’ families thought otherwise. Eric Boyle, whose wife and daughter were killed, said, “Ultimately today, I felt that money did prevail. If [he] had been any other youth, I feel like the circumstances would have been different.” Shaunna Jennings, who lost her husband, said, “You lived a life of privilege and entitlement, and my prayer is that it does not get you out of this. My fear is that it will get you out of this.”Intoxication manslaughter is a second-degree felony in Texas, which carries a penalty of no less than 2 years and no more than 20 years in prison. In sentencing, a judge will consider the fact that the defendant is a juvenile, with “diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform.”
Black and Hispanic kids do uit because of broken family, rich Whites do it because they just have too much of everything only excitment left is get high or drunk and kill people and hand the parents the bill, imagine the character that guy will grow into or take alook at right wing congress pretty much all are millionaires, makes them insensitive to everyday people.
