It’s not that stupid. At least, in other states juvenile offenders who abscond can be imprisoned beyond 18/19/other local cutoff.
So his 10 year probation was really only 2½ years - until he turned 19?
If the beer pong video didn’t surface until this coming May, or May 2018 (when he will be 21) they wouldn’t have been able to do anything to him?
Yeah I don’t get it either. They may as well have given him a hundred years probation for all the good it would have done. I mean what’s the point of giving someone probation at all if it doesn’t really count.
I get more and more pissed at this situation. If I killed four people in a situation like that I’d be shackled to a jail cot as we speak. I’m beginning to really dislike this little prick.
Holy carp. Getting drunk is apparently a long-standing (for relative values of long-standing) behaviour for him.
The Daily Mail has quite a write-up on him. I found this paragraph particularly disturbing:
It seems fairly straightforward how Couch’s probation was supposed to work. He was a minor at the time of his offense and conviction, so he fell under the juvenile justice system. The juvie system is in charge of him and his case until he turns 19, at which point he gets turned over to the adult courts.
So he gets 10 years of probation, which will be split between the juvenile and adult court systems. The most that the juvenile system can do to him is to imprison him until he ages out of the system at 19, at which point his probation would continue as an adult. Violations of parole as an adult are treated much more harshly, which is why the DA is trying to get him transferred from the juvenile system to the adult system earlier than his previous sentence called for.
So yeah, if he violates parole at 16 he gets 3 years in jail, but if he violates parole at 18 years and 364 days he gets 1 day in jail. If he violates parole at 19 years and one minute he gets like 40 years in jail. It seems arbitrary, but there is a reason that we have a juvenile justice system that doesn’t treat teenagers (or younger) like adults. The time to convict and sentence Couch as an adult would have been at his trial, and the prosecutor either could not or would not do that back then. I imagine that if Couch was tried for a new crime that was unrelated to his existing juvenile conviction (ie for a new drunk driving offense rather than violation of his existing parole), he would be tried as an adult and penalized as such.
So again, from the standpoint of the hypothetical sociopathic parent, it seems like a good idea to whisk Ethan out of the country for as long as possible if/when he violates parole, up until his 19th birthday, if you think you can keep him from committing additional crimes in the process. That’s why you don’t let him run on his own, because you know he’ll fuck that second part up. It may even be best to have him come back and turn himself in a day or two before his 19th birthday, so that he can’t be accused of being on the run as an adult.
Think of it like making the decision to walk away from a mortgage: given the right set of circumstances, you would be willing to take the hit to your credit rating in order to get out of a bad deal.
If I were going to spend months in detention, I think I’d prefer a U.S. jail to a Mexican migrant holding facility.
Maybe he’ll learn something about the world from his 3-4 Central American migrant roommates. If hell freezes over, it could happen.
You should be mad at the prosecutor for not going after him as an adult and mad at the judge for being a retard.
The good news is that even if he gets out of the parole violation, he seems determined to give the authorities more chances to put him away for a long time.
Is the kid’s goal to delay the process long enough so that he won’t spend any time in jail in Texas? It seems like he’s trying to get to the 19th birthday deadline. Anyone compare where he is now with where he would be jailed when he gets deported?
Did Couch fly coach?
From the article I linked previously:
I hope the judge transfers him to the adult system. And I hope his Mom gets 10 years in the pokey for her role in this escapade.
Should be mining uranium in Canada but it’s a start.
Updating this thread:[
Ethan Couch is due in court on Friday; [here’s a look at how a similar case involving a teenager who didn’t have rich parents was decided:
](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEADLY_WRECK_AFFLUENZA_TWO_CASES_TXOL-?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-02-15-11-28-40)His case was quickly moved to adult court and he accepted a 20 year sentence in a plea deal rather than risk 50 years if convicted at trial. According to the article, he becomes eligible for parole next year and expects to be deported once he is release.
Ethan Couch’s fate?
His mother, Tanya Couch, by the way, had her bail reduced from $1,000,000 to $75,000 and has been out on bail since mid-January.
Lol, let’s go down to the quarry and have sex with trees like Snowboarder Bo likes to do.
Why are you camouflaging yourself with oak bark and branches?
Second choice. He was unable to identify a larch.
Texas?!?!? Welcome to Earth.