‘Affluenza’: When the wealthy escape justice

Critics of the American judicial system have long contended that the rich can get away with murder, said Matthew Fleischer in LATimes.com. Now that privilege has a name: the “affluenza” defense. Ethan Couch, 16, of Fort Worth was sentenced only to probation last week for the crime of getting wildly drunk, driving his pickup 30 mph over the speed limit, and killing four pedestrians and leaving a friend brain-damaged and paralyzed. Incredibly, Texas Judge Jean Boyd accepted the defense argument that Couch, whose millionaire parents set him few boundaries, suffered from “affluenza”—a “psychosis of extreme wealth” that diminished his understanding of the consequences of his actions. Psychologist G. Dick Miller testified that “he had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle.” The judge spared Couch the 20-year jail term sought by prosecutors and shipped him off to a $450,000 rehab facility in California, featuring equine therapy and cooking classes, all paid for by his father.

What a travesty of justice, said psychology professor Christopher J. Ferguson in Time.com. For perhaps the first time, “having too easy a life” has been deemed a mitigating circumstance in a terrible crime. Actually, Couch’s sentence is not unusual, said Manny Fernandez and John Schwartz in The New York Times. When minors are involved in drunk-driving homicides, judges often prefer giving them “a second chance through rehabilitation” instead of throwing them in jail with hardened criminals. The inflammatory nature of the word “affluenza” was a distraction here. Young people are “prone to impulsive behavior,” explained Liz Ryan, president of the Campaign for Youth Justice. “And at the same time, they are capable of change.”

But not every young person would have received such leniency, said Stephen A. Crockett in TheRoot.com. If a poor black teenager argued that his “combination of societal and parental neglect” excused him from killing four white teens, he’d be jailed in a heartbeat. By giving Couch a wrist slap for a quadruple homicide, said Paul Callan in CNN.com, the judge sent all the wrong messages about wealth, privilege, and justice in America. If this spoiled teen really is suffering from affluenza, I can think of a cure: a “solid dose of state-inflicted poverty in a prison cell where Ethan Couch would learn that his money can’t buy justice.”

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