Ethan Couch
We’ve been talking a fair amount lately about the relationship between a given offense, the imposed consequences and the desired outcome. Too often, they have little realistic relationship to one another. We see many nonviolent drug offenders in prison for long stretches, for example, while we are forced to release violent convicts early because of prison overcrowding. We have a common problem, in the immortal words of Gilbert and Sullivan, in that we are apt not to “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime.”
Here are two examples, from opposite ends of the twin spectrums of degree of seriousness and fair administration of justice.
In Canon City, Colorado, six-year-old Hunter Yelton was suspended from school for two days for giving a little girl in his class a kiss on the hand during reading group. His stated crime: sexual harassment.
Robin Gooldy, the school system superintendent, explained the label – which will be entered in his school file – by saying that this was not Hunter’s first offense; he had kissed the girl in question before – a peck on the cheek. Hunter fully owns up to the charge as well as his crush on his classmate. This in itself is a pretty courageous thing to do if I remember first grade as well as I think I do.
Gooldy went on to talk about the system’s interest in not having students “receiving unwanted advances,” but according to sources, the young lady was “fine with it,” and considers Hunter her boyfriend.
Okay, maybe kids shouldn’t be kissing each other during classes, and maybe some mild discipline is in order, either at school or home; but sexual harassment, and the stigma that will follow? Come on! How much harm was there in these innocent kisses, and how much potential harm is there in the label that will haunt this kid throughout his school career? This is just misguided and stupid.
Now, on the other side of the ledger:
In Tarrant County, Texas, 16-year-old Ethan Couch was given a ten-year suspended sentence for intoxication manslaughter in a drunken automobile accident that killed four people and severely injured two others. On the night of June 15, 2013, Couch and some friends shoplifted two cases of beer from a Walmart in Burleson, got in his red Ford F-350 pickup truck drunk out of his mind and, doing 70 in a 40 MPH zone, crashed into Breanna Mitchell, whose SUV had broken down. Hollie Boyles and her daughter Shelby had come out of their home to help Ms. Mitchell, and Brian Jennings, a youth pastor, stopped his own pickup to help. Ms. Mitchell and all three of the good Samaritans were killed. One of the two boys riding in the bed of the pickup is paralyzed and unable to talk. The other suffered broken bones and internal injuries.
The impact of the crash threw the victims between 50 and 60 yards.
Three hours after the crash, Couch registered a blood alcohol content of 0.24 – three times the legal limit for adults in Texas. Of course, the legal limit for teens is zero. And this was not Couch’s first drunk driving incident or citation. And he was also found one time by police in his pickup with a naked 14-year-old girl passed out next to him. The cops gave him a ticket. His parents paid it and imposed no further punishment.
The defense put forth a rather novel argument to counter the prosecution’s request for a 20-year prison sentence. Young Ethan was the product of so much affluence, no limits on his behavior from his parents, and no consequences to his actions, that he essentially didn’t know the difference between right and wrong.
Defense psychiatrist G. Dick Miller used a term that is now certain to enter the popular lexicon of notoriety: Affluenza.
He explained, “his family felt that wealth bought privilege and there was no rational link between behavior and consequences.”
Going all the way back to the M’Naghten Rule in England in 1843, knowing right from wrong has been the principle calculus in determining sanity or insanity. Is Couch’s side saying that this kid was so spoiled that he was rendered insane? If so, that, in itself, is insane.
In lieu of incarceration, Judge Jean Boyd agreed to send Couch to a residential treatment and counseling facility in cushy Newport Beach, California, for an extended stay, for which his parents will fork over close to 500 large.
We could argue that ghetto youths should get the same consideration for povertylia when they commit crimes. But there is an even larger issue here.
In my view, sentencing should always take into consideration two desired outcomes. One is to show the individual and the community that there are consequences to every action. The second is to show the injured parties and/or their survivors that the law, to the extent humanly possible, is trying to render justice by establishing a balance between what has happened to them and what will happen to the offender.
In both of these considerations, Judge Boyd’s sentence has failed miserably.
I know, juvenile justice is supposed to be more interested in reclaiming and redirecting a wayward life than in punishment for its own sake. But in a case this egregious, where you’ve got a kid with no conscience or respect for normal society, a year or two in a country club treatment center while many families have had their own lives destroyed just doesn’t cut it.
Eric Boyles, husband of one of the victims and father of another, stated that his own psyche has been ripped apart. “For 25 weeks, I’ve been going through a healing process. And so when the verdict came out, I mean, my immediate reaction is — I’m back to week one. We have accomplished nothing here. My healing process is out the window.”
By all that is right, isn’t he owed anything out of this?
If Ethan Couch’s parents didn’t instill some reality and social conscience in him, well, I guarantee you, prison would have.
It was an outcome he, and his victims’ families, all deserved.
Thanks for your post. The first situation is a sign of our times, of the belief and fallacy of what sexual harassment is, and that it can be eliminated if we only address it young. I suspect also factoring into this is the feminization of education.
On the second, I taught secondary public ed in the urban environment. No one has a stronger sense of right and wrong than poor kids. A group of students with behavioral issues I sat with listened to the usual spiel of, “conflict resolution” and “anger management” from a guest presenter. After she left, I asked them to be frank, and what did they think of the info? One student, speaking for all of them said, “We know what the right thing is, it is just tough to do it.”
This reprobate was not living in a vacuum. He was part of a larger community which if his parents were not doing their job, then he could still be expected to know that his behavior was out of bounds. Justice exists for a variety of reasons, but first is to take the impulse and reaction for revenge and to channel it into a larger venue. I cannot go after the one who has harmed me and kill him, I must turn it over to the state. The state in turn, must address my need for vengeance without using its superior resources to do more than is necessary. Through this compact, the state then has an interest in maintaining law and order. When the state can deliver justice, it strengthens the compact.
Thank you for this articulate and well-reasoned comment, Whosear.