Message #18549

[goldenearring]

My, oh my, we need you to somehow get on the prospective juror's list, Elaine, even though you'd be booted off right away, just like me!  She thought that she could get off with a slap on the hand, at first, if she plea-bargained.  Then she changed her mind and decided she wanted to go to trial.  Then, much to her [probable] consternation, the events of 9/11 made our police and firefighting forces untouchable heroes in the eyes of nearly every American and world citizen who saw a t.v.  So she figured that she would receive an "unfair" trial, because of all of the undue attention the media had been giving to the police and fire people, and pled guilty.  Immediately after she pled guilty, she walked outside the courtroom [can somebody say "idiot" please?] and gave a press interview in which she stated that "I have just pled guilty to something of which I am innocent."  Thank God for the judge in her case.  He called her back into the courtroom and said, in essence, "Listen, baby.  You can't have it both ways:  guilty in the courtroom and innocent out in the world.  What is it:  innocent or guilty?"  You could see the fire in her eyes, like when a parent tells a terrible-2'er to seit down in his highchair.  She started out recounting all of the things that she was NOT guilty of and finished up by saying, ". . . and as far as aiding and abetting . . . [blah blah blah] . . . of that I am guilty."  Publicized far and wide over the television network.  After all the tax dough she has cost us, I say, "No more.  No trial.  You made your choice.  It's over."  Let's hope the judge agrees and just sticks to the sentencing date of 12/7.  I guess it would be hard, after over twenty of years of thinking you'd gotten away with something, to find out that the piper was at your door, waiting to be paid.  What do you think her sentence will be?  I figured she'd probably get a year's probation, and then I learned that due to the felony status of the crime that the least she could get by with is 1-5 years' time.  What do you think is fair, even though I know that's hard to gauge as probably none of us is going to go back and study the news from the 70s and all facts to date?  Do you know of anybody else to whom this kind of situation has happened?