The heir, the judge and the homeless mom: America’s prison bias for the 1%
▻http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/02/dupont-heir-homeless-mom-america-prison-bias
A DuPont trust-fund creep gets probation. A black woman looking for a job cries in jail for a week. Something’s wrong here.
- Shanesha Taylor, who has been charged with felony child abuse in Scottsdale, Arizona, because she left her two small children alone in a car for a little over an hour to attend a job interview .
▻http://i.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/4/2/1396447132109/af5b2879-60c8-48bf-a3d9-6bcc20124a30-bestSizeAvailable.png?width=620&heigh
- In 2009, when Robert H Richard IV, an unemployed heir to the DuPont family fortune, pled guilty to fourth-degree rape of his three-year-old daughter , a judge spared him a justifiable sentence – indeed, only put Richard on probation – because she figured this 1-percenter would “not fare well” in a prison setting.
Details of the case were kept quiet until just the other day, as Richard’s ex-wife filed a new lawsuit accusing him of also sexually abusing their son. Since then, the original verdict has been fueling some angry speculation – shock, horror - that the defendant’s wealth and status may have played a role in his lenient sentencing.
via @opironet