A “grace period” to allow for appeal is typical for non-violent white collar crimes. It may be also to allow her to complete her pregnancy because prison medical facilities are not generally constituted for childbirth.
Stranger
I wonder who will raise the kids. Will they bring the kids to visit her? Who’s the father, anyway?
It’s too bad her product was fake. I can’t see why people believed her. It would have been real sweet if it had been for real.
Doesn’t work that way in Canada. ONce sentence is passed, bailiff takes you into custody; trial court is functus.
To get bail (not a grace period), the accused has to file a notice of appeal with the appellate court, then apply to that court for bail. That can happen, but it doesn’t take half a year with the accused being out on the street.
Her husband is Billy Evans, heir to some hotel chain fortune. I suspect her kids will be well cared for. But her unborn child will be in 5th grade when she finishes this sentence, unless it gets reduced. That’s a lot of time missed for a child not to have a mother around.
Interesting cite. Thank you.
54 days is a bit less than 2 months. Per year. So one can earn a 54/365 ~= 15% “discount” on one’s sentence. Not too shabby.
I’d have to imagine that as long as one can keep one’s psychopathic ego in check and not mouth off to the more senior guards, your standard white-collar criminal staying at “Club Fed” would have no problem earning the max discount. Assuming the Feds actually deliver the discounts versus it being a fake carrot on a stick.
I’m not sure it is much of a miss in this particular case.
Stranger
Yeah, it might be long enough for the child to develop normal human ethics.
Hopefully someone will be there to take on motherly duties. It seems like dad can afford it.
I am bothered by the idea she’d be selfish enuf to go ahead and get pregnant not once, by two times in an attempt to influence the outcome of her legal troubles, but I am not comfortable hating on her for chosing to become a mother under whatever circumstances. There is plenty to dislike about her already, and I feel empathy for a kid who may only be known as the child of some crazy business crook who’s locked-up.
It could be as simple as she knew prison was very likely and it was have kids now or never have them. But she’s a fucking sociopath so it’s difficult to say.
Around twenty years ago, my friend’s father was jogging on the side of the road and was killed by a drunk driver. It was a hit and run. She tried to cover up her crime by pounding out the dent in her car the next day but was ultimately caught and sentenced to jail. She purposely got knocked up before she had to start her sentence and the judge decided that she didn’t have to serve any time. So it works sometimes.
That seems pretty cruel, to be honest. Most people are going to need some time to put their affairs in order. And it makes a difference if they’re going away for 18 months or 11 years, so not all of it can be done before sentencing.
Once sentence is passed, they’re a convicted criminal.
Plus a fairness issue: would a black guy convicted of trafficking get half a year to put his affairs in order, as opposed to an upper class white woman?
Once sentenced, they can apply for bail right away, if they file an appeal. Same for everyone who’s a convicted criminal.
I think sometimes a lie can be so big that the sheer enormity of it makes it believable. You might think to yourself that it’s bullshit, everyone knows such a claim is bullshit, and therefore nobody would attempt to make such a transparently bullshit lie. If they were trying to scam you they’d come up with a more believeable lie. Right? It’s why I believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now combine that with a young, attractive woman who is promising you technology that’s going to change the world and you might be eager to get in on the ground floor. And once you’re fooled, even with mounting evidence, it can be tough to admit to yourself that it happened.
I’m not surprised that people were fooled. I’m impressed by the scale of the con though.
Does bail mean something different in Canada than the US? Bail here is the release of a defendant while their court case is upcoming. But Holmes’ case is completely settled; aside from appeals, there are no further court dates. I’ve never heard of an actual convicted prisoner being released on bail.
Naw. My post has a typo. I typed “can’t” for “can”. I completely understand why people believed her. On the one hand, the technically details didn’t make any sense. But how many people actually know much about biochemistry? We see miracles of micro computers all around us. Why not micro medical assays, too? And they would be so very very sweet.
“What’s good for M & M Enterprises will be good for the country.” — Milo Minderbender
It isn’t even biochemistry that is really the problem; it is the basic physics of microfluidics, and in particular handling a fluid that is purpose-designed to be ‘sticky’ and coagulate. There is just no way that you would ever be able to construct a system that would deliver fluid from a drop of blood through hundreds or thousands of channels and then be able to clean and sterilize these channels for the next test. Which is what experts in microfluidics told Holmes to begin with, and anyone who did the due diligence of consulting experts should have known.
Stranger
I mean, i don’t know anything about microfluidics, but I’ve handled blood (i did a stint in a lab) and it’s sadly obvious that you can’t run a drop of blood through a gazillion tests. And yes, also that cleaning the inside of that box would be a nightmare. Heck, even replacing the reagents would be.
They’ve been living on one of the seven carriage homes on this estate. Even if they move after this, those kids are growing up very privileged. Billy Evans is not on the hook for Holmes’ legal woes as he married her after them, so his fortune is unentangled and will be unaffected.
As far as visitation goes there is the MINT program for mothers and newborns, but there are only five in the country. I think the nearest to her is Phoenix. Otherwise the closest is probably the minimum-security facility in Dublin, CA, which is where Patricia Hearst, Holywood madame Heidi Fleiss, and college-bribing actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman did their time.
Were they claiming this? Most microfluidics stuff I’ve seen uses disposable arrays, which are at least theoretically practical since they’re small and easily manufactured in volume (molded plastic, etched glass, etc.). That’s how cheap genotyping works, at any rate.
Why? I dunno. But that’s what they were promising. They were producing a magic box. You put a drop of blood in it, and numbers came out. They were not promising a sheaf of separate disposable tests.