Flap Your Lips Friday
Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 23rd, 2014
Good morning!
More white boy “just us” justice from Think Progress.
Protesters Demand Answers After Rich Man Avoids Any Jail Time For 7th DUI Conviction
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 toseveral 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?”
Ever since his arrest, Goodman has been the recipient of relatively lenient punishment from the court system. His bail was initially set at $75,000, which he paid. Though his request to leave the state for a trip to Las Vegas was denied, Judge Dixon did grant Goodman permission to fly to New York City for the Super Bowl just barely a month after his arrest. Goodman’s lawyer told the judge that his client had “what may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see his hometown team play in the Super Bowl.”
Goodman’s punishment is a far cry from Washington State’s sentencing guidelines for DUI offenders. According to the court system’s most recent DUI sentencing grid, anyone found with a BAC above .15 (Goodman’s was .16) and with two or three prior offenses (Goodman had six), the mandatory minimum jail time is 120 days. The minimum sentence may not be overturned “unless the court finds that imprisonment of this mandatory minimum sentence would impose a substantial risk to the offender’s physical or mental well-being.”
Regard for a defendant’s “mental well-being” is the argument that defense attorneys have used with alarming success in recent months to get their wealthy clients out of jail sentences or any other serious punishment. 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.
*****
Readers: Doesn’t this just make you sick? What is the solution? I’ll leave that up to you to figure out. I am done. I have had issues with my blog for most of the evening tonight, (so sorry again that the blog was down.) I am beat and going to bed. HOPEfully when I wake up in the morning there will be no issues and this will post as scheduled at 9:00 AM. I am counting on it.
It’s Friday…you know what to do. Start flapping and blog me.
Thanks for sticking this out with me again. I so appreciate all of you being here with me.
xox
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:
Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129
Thank you for your loyal support!
All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2014
“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream
" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"
May 24th, 2014 at 7:03 am
The judge, along with the offender, should be tarred and feathered and placed in the city square.
May 24th, 2014 at 7:03 am
If the rich can claim “affluenza,” then the poor should be able to claim “brokelipsey”
May 24th, 2014 at 7:04 am
Disgusting!
May 24th, 2014 at 7:04 am
not what that type of statutory language was ever intended by any legislative body to mean–and that intent of the law was ignored IMO
May 24th, 2014 at 7:05 am
Extremely disturbing. This man needs to move to Ontario, we have some good laws with regards to DUI’s. 3rd strike, say goodbye to your license.
May 24th, 2014 at 7:05 am
When the laws aren’t equally enforced for all, this same thing will just continue on and on. Money is such a corrosive thing that it will turn the very people who swore to uphold the laws into puppets.
Just look at some of the idiot celebrities that continually do bonehead illegal actions and get sent to a Malibu resorts or a slap on the hinnie. If that had been me or you we’d all be in orange wearing prison flipflops…no questions asked. It’s not right, it’s no fair and it makes people hateful.
Even when a rich & powerful get some punishment it’s not the same as the rest of us. Prison county clubs don’t compare. All they do is improve their tennis or golf games.
May 24th, 2014 at 7:11 am
Rich folks get away with murder. Have you ever heard of a rich person on death row?
May 24th, 2014 at 7:13 am
This is just a Leftist Rag blog ! But you Progressive Left love to live in the low information arena and those nasty rich are not all Republicans if you chose to pay attention but then again low information is what you are and it so shows !
May 24th, 2014 at 7:13 am
While you have the imposter unloading the jail houses all across the country, Murders Rapist , Drunk driving illegals who wouldn`t understand you if you yelled in their face Course that must`ve slipped your mind, Huh Lefty?
May 24th, 2014 at 7:14 am
“…with liberty and justice for all”. (that can afford it)
May 24th, 2014 at 7:15 am
Our justice system may be blind but it knows a 10 from a 20. Those who just have tens, go to jail.
May 24th, 2014 at 7:19 am
The rich deserve better because they create jobs in China .
May 24th, 2014 at 7:26 am
Lol they demand answers? I can give them the answer, he is rich. Any idiot knows there are 2 justice system in America, one for the rich and one for everyone else. Well 3 I guess, there is a third for black people. Doesn’t take a brilliant individual to figure out which one sees the least harsh sentences
May 24th, 2014 at 7:56 am
It’s really bad when American judges turn themselves into ‘scoff laws by proxy”. It’s going to be some story like this outrageous one that’s going to trigger national outrage about the direction this country has taken. The Rodney King riots are going to be considered a block party in comparison.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:01 am
Ska, the Rodney King riots are going to be considered a block party in comparison.
As someone who was involved in the RK riots, your statement scares the hell out of me at the very concept that it ever could.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:08 am
I was in CA when those riots broke out. They were bad. Very bad. Sorry that was a trigger for you. I didn’t intend that. I was making an analogy.
And what’s coming will be worse when enough people reach the tipping point –
too poor for too long after living ‘normal’ lives, homeless, housing discrimination, rising rents/lower quality housing, hungry, no jobs, jobs outsourced, not enough pay, wage theft, kids turned away from schools, worrying about whether the kids will come home from schools in one piece, too many rich law breakers given a pass while members of various families are put in jail for years and decades for doing the same crime, discrimination, PTSD, and these GOP laws which take away women’s rights, voters’ rights, and more rights –
except the right to hang some automatic rifle off a shoulder and show up at a political rally in the United States of America.
When enough people feel like they have nothing to lose, that’s when the collective consciousness will snap. On a smaller scale, it is exactly what happened in LA. What I’m talking about would be nationwide. OWS was the ‘do it nice’ version.
People got beat, severely injured, wrongly arrested and DNA taken, killed, and pepper sprayed for voicing their dismay at the system. It was the opening of the pressure valve and if TPTB had been smart, they would have let it play out. By driving all that back down, they just put off the inevitable.
Do any of us really want to live the rest of our lives without hope that we have any chance of making life better with our best efforts? The thought that we could change our situation and make it better if we just persevered used to sustain and drive us all to one extent or another.
But as we see daily, our life chances are being yanked out from under us on so many levels, in so many ways at once, we can’t stop the hemorrhaging of our quality of life – now with this political malfunction going on – the obstruction, lies, deliberately refusing to do anything that would move the country forward to prosperity – and by country, I mean ALL of us, not just the freakin’ 1%.
Rant over.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:13 am
Excellent rant!
May 24th, 2014 at 8:14 am
He needs to be brought before a judicial review board.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:15 am
Just like a guy here where I live. He kept getting off DUI after DUI until he killed someone. Here he killed one guy who was on his way to get the paper one weekend. Sooner or later he’ll kill someone or some ones then they’ll do something.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:19 am
If he does kill someone(s), his lawyers will use the affluenza defense and he will be in a posh rehab for a few months.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:24 am
“Judge Dixon did grant Goodman permission to fly to New York City for the Super Bowl just barely a month after his arrest. Goodman’s lawyer told the judge that his client had “what may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see his hometown team play in the Super Bowl.”
Fucking unbelievable….
May 24th, 2014 at 8:26 am
The American society is built from the ground up to shield rich white men from having to account for the people they fuck.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:27 am
The only way this guy is going to face any sort of real consequences is if he kills himself in a crash from his 8th dui.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:28 am
Honestly, I’m okay with that part. The point of travel restrictions is to prevent people from running away. It’s pretty clear by now that this guy isn’t going to skip out on his bail, given how many times he’s been in this situation.
The punishment is supposed to be the sentence, not what happens before the sentence.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:29 am
This guy did get jail time. 364 days the MAX allowed under the law there. He is just being able to get out during the day to go to work. He still spends his nights and weekends in jail.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Protest-against-Ferrari-DUI-driver-sentence-259606631.html
May 24th, 2014 at 8:30 am
Justice system is actually encouraged by the state to hand down sentences that avoid making the person involved avoid losing their jobs and become wards of the state.
Work release means you get to work during the day but you have to report to jail on nights and weekends. So much ignorance in this thread (and mostly people who didn’t bother reading the article)
May 24th, 2014 at 8:32 am
Shan#21, Sadly, affluenza strikes all ages- don’t forget to get checked! (My bank assured me Im in no danger)
May 24th, 2014 at 8:46 am
The inspiration for any revolution is change, and ideologies, however extreme, are generally fought for with the convictions of having the moral and/or rational high ground.
I’m sure that many those that led the fight for Americans to separate from Britain to be rid of the old system truly believed they’d create a better, more democratic society, free from the oppressive rule of elites who prevented class mobility.
However, clearly the old money and power not only did not disappear from American society, but benefitted more directly from the removal of competition.
Relatively speaking, early America certainly was a land of opportunity for the poor white male to become rich. But The rich remained rich, and only became richer and better able to influence the entire system until it became as corrupt and bloated as the one it once departed from.
Why? Because when a group seeks to advance only themselves at the expense of the rest of people, they eventually become the victims of the more devious of that group.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:51 am
Well Said.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:52 am
The inspiration for most revolutions is hunger, poverty, and lots of deaths. Ideology is secondary.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:53 am
Don’t forget that the leaders of the American Revolution were wealthy slave owners who made plans to ethnically cleanse other peoples in pursuit of more wealth.
It might well be true that there were American revolutionaries who didn’t have the same class status or mindset, but the leaders of the revolution definitely fought for a system that would benefit them as the new ruling class of society.
May 24th, 2014 at 8:57 am
They also largely went to war to protect their lucrative smuggling operations.
See, the British fought an incredibly costly war to protect the colonists from the French, which caused them to nearly go broke. They responded with the reasonable demand that the colonists finance at least some of their own defense.
Certain smugglers (like the Adams brothers) were thriving at around this time, doing things like importing inferior Chinese tea which they could flood the market with.
They also controlled the local markets, so the taxed British tea wasn’t being sold. Realizing their taxes weren’t getting paid due to the black market, the British cracked down on the smugglers and started shipping in large quantities of higher quality (and actually cheaper) tea from India.
Well, the glorious founding fathers couldn’t have that, so they started agitating towards the British in an attempt to get them to overreact.
It worked, and America was born.
May 24th, 2014 at 9:11 am
Well, the thing is, what we have is representative democracy, where we pick candidates to rule. Representative democracy on it’s own affords people no ability to actually effect change besides threatening to replace the representative, which you only get to do once every four years or so in most situations.
So, while in theory there is still a democratic system in play where unpopular policies will eventually be removed, the actual ability to express one’s own political opinion through the democratic process is so limited that the only issues guaranteed to recieve consideration during the very limited process are those based on very broad socioeconomic divides.
For America, the officially sanctioned list of “The Issues” are:
1. Will the government restrict the abortion of pregnancies, and in what cases?
2. Will the government recognize marriages between individuals of the same gender?
3. Will the government assist needy individuals with monetary or food assistance?
This trifecta of abortion, gay rights, and welfare form the sum total of issues that actually differ from candidate to candidate. If your set of political choices are not restricted to these three things, or you simply don’t have an opinion for these things, then you are going to have a bad time.
Practically every other policy enacted by the government does not come up during a campaign unless it can be tied into These Issues, or the candidate is attempting to reach out to a disaffected voter base.
That latter case is what Barack Obama did in the 2008 election, with broad promises or implications to reign in an out-of-control warfare state, enact tough net neutrality rules, and so on.
In fact, his best, but because he lost the House to an electorate that couldn’t focus on the cause Obama is forced to compromise and fight the obstructionist policies of republicans. His hands are tied by Congress at this point)
So, with all of those policies that we really, really cared about watered-down, ignored, or outright reversed, you would think that Obama would have had a really tough time in 2012? No, actually, none of that stuff mattered. Obama got re-elected because Romney meant repealing Obamacare wholesale. And while there’s a lot of not-very-good policy in Obamacare, the whole package still has enough benefit for those living in states with little health insurance regulation that he got enough support to keep him in office.
And so far Obama has been fighting the good fight with no chance of winning as long as the republican own the House. So if you that are bitching about what Obama hasn’t done continue to stay away from the polls or get tricked into supporting some third party candidate, then NOTHING will change because the republicans will retain the House and maybe take control of the Senate.
The point isn’t so much to beat up on Obama – there’s nobody better that I can actually vote for, sadly enough. The kinds of viewpoints we are taking on /r/politics are ones that are simply not entertained in the American political sphere.
In fact, many of them are third rails. Nobody who runs for president actually has the guts to tell the NSA to stop collecting data and using it to kill people, especially if it gets results.
You wouldn’t win on such a platform, nor would you have the courage to unilaterally shut down those programs and risk an actual terrorist attack that would shortly be blamed on you.
This is regardless of how good the “results” are – the masses of voters, at least on a subconscious level, want the NSA to spy on the bad guys, and they don’t understand that they could wind up being one of those bad guys.
Rephrasing horrible incursions into human rights as a defence against scoundrels is cheap and easy, in a political sense. Shutting them down, when there’s even a small, short-term benefit to running them now, takes a very large amount of courage that politicians frankly do not have.
(Also, god help you if your political pet peeve is copyright law. It’s very difficult to express to people how DRM in web browsers is a horrible security problem when they stop you before you can say “EME” because you’re in the way of their Netflix.)
All of this boils down to one big problem: representative democracy is not a good system for actually deciding what principles and policies a government should pursue.
It does not put things like “The government should spy on people” up for a vote. It puts things like “George W. Bush is a loveable home-grown country bumpkin” up for a vote.
Bush was actually a full-on criminal genius, BTW – the appearance of being a simpleton was a carefully crafted campaign lie. So representative democracy isn’t even a very good popularity contest either.
May 25th, 2014 at 11:57 am
[…] Kevin: I wish I could Lol with that one all the way to the bank but unfortunately, we know it wouldn’t fly. […]