ArsCompendium - Digital Scribes For The New Millenium

Users Online

7 Users Online

A Get Out of Jail Free Card

Read more articles on Let Me Share With You and Law and Legal Issues.

October 23, 2006

About This Editor: Karen has enjoyed her many varied experiences in corporate business management, dance education, and preschool assistance. She hopes to write about these past lives-and more-from her home in Pittsburgh, PA, where she lives with her husband, daughter, and 3 cats.

1 Views

Submit this article to the following social bookmark news sites:

Attempting to keep on a path relatively free of regional happenings, I try to steer away from writing about what’s in our newspaper. But this morning I can’t resist commenting on an article in today’s press about a local situation…

A little league coach was convicted to 6 years in jail for bribing a player to bean another child with a baseball so that he’d be out of the game- because the victim happened to be autistic. Now, the defense is claiming the man should be freed, as his family will endure economic hardship while he’s in the slammer.

Uh…isn’t that a good reason to avoid getting there in the first place?

Just think what would happen if we only kept the folks in jail whose families could afford to manage quite well without them-we may have all of a dozen incarcerated throughout the country.

When I was in my 20’s, I briefly considered a career as a lawyer, but taking one law class erased that thought from my head. At the time, it seemed, for lack of better words, noble. I’m sure that legality-based TV shows like “LA Law” did a lot to encourage young people to enter that profession, by glamorizing the saving of innocent from all sorts of bad individuals. (Remember the dialogue when the new lawyer complained about having to defend the “scum of the earth” and another asked, “Who did you think you’d be representing, Sleepy, Mopey and Dopey?”)

Throughout the years, I’ve become more cynical, and more stunned, by the sheer audacity in some defense arguments. You have to admit they can be creative. I sure hope I can find one of those lawyers if I’m ever on trial. Until then, I better tow the line and follow every rule, because if I get put away, my household will suffer hardship from mess, dust, dirty clothes and a host of other domestic woes; no way will I have time to serve time. Do you think a lawyer can argue that?