> I'm kinda happy for her that her punishment is fairly mild - I mean after all she'll have to live with the guilt for the rest of her life - but she's definitely responsible for it.
This is an odd statement. She killed someone. Feeling bad about it is irrelevant imo. And living with guilt is not the equivalent of time served.
You are missing the point. She can always be charged with manslaughter and take her max of 10 years in prison, or she can plea bargain down to 1 month.
It's not about what you can prove, but what you can extort using trumped up charges to force a plea.
(I'm not being serious, but that was the OP's point i believe)
She received an 11-year sentence last November but she's apparently a free woman until April 27th of this year.
Can someone who knows more about the American legal system explain this to me? Why is this possible? I assumed that when you're sentenced you get taken to jail pretty much immediately.
(Yes, I'm sure the short answer is just "because she has lots of money", but what are the details? What exactly did she spend it on to buy an extra 5 months of freedom?)
> There is an appeal, so let's see if she really belongs there.
I think you're missing the point, yes it is legal for anyone to appeal a conviction.
In the US (and I assume most of the rest of the world) that is dependent on your ability to pay a lawyer to do that for you and your likely outcome is impacted by the price you are able to pay for that lawyer.
The other point is, this is a conversation about a two tier justice system. Rich people get to spend their appeal in a mansion, poor people sit in prison waiting on an appeal.
So I would say, she's been convicted of a crime and has been given time for it, send her to prison like everyone else.
Once her appeal is successful, then let her go back to that life of luxury.
> Nothing she did deserves what happened. Nothing.
she was convicted of harrasment of minors by a jury in a court of law. presumably there was supporting evidence of the harrasment charges, and that's not something that the article disputes.
"She lost her teaching credentials instead of 40 years in prison."
It stuns me that 40 years was even a possibility. And it makes me wonder: have there been cases like this that we've never heard of, with similar vengeful prosecutors and similar ignorant, bewildered, defendants, who now cry themselves to sleep every night over what happened to their life?
>If this thing was minor, there's still 2 months you'll never get back.
There is no argument what jail time is bad. It is the offense that seems to be minor (and thus easy to fight for a lawyer) - while IANAL, my understanding from what i see and hear around, misdemeanor resulting in 2 months of county jail without a lawyer is really not that big a deal, on par with second DUI, something what with a lawyer can be on the scale of like a month or two of community service, etc...
After googling around, i even more convinced that not having a lawyer (whether by choice or due to not being able to afford it) was her great misfortune as while legally she seems to be a violator, personally i got the impression that at the social level she was kind of a victim, or more precisely she happened to be too weak for (and was broken by) the relationships and the people (much higher-ups in her professional and social hierarchy) she allowed herself to be involved with. Basically she needs counseling, and instead the society comes with all the power of law upon her and throws her in jail (the events do seems to had gotten somewhat out of hands, so something needed to be done, the issue here is what should have been done - the good lawyer would probably was able to turn it into correctional/rehabilitation/treatment direction instead of the pure punitive).
The crime she was convicted of isn't a crime you should spend effectively the rest of your life in jail for. It's as simple as that.
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