Donte Stallworth

[barrett]

Stallworth just got 30 days in jail for KILLING someone while driving drunk. Apparently the lower sentence was influenced by the fact that he had already reached a financial agreement with the family of the victim. And this is apparently normal practice for a sentence to be shorter if the settlement is reached ahead of time. Unbelievable. You should get more than 30 days for drunk driving without hurting anyone.

[superbowlbound]

wow. america sucks. That's unbelievable. Plaxico is facing a mandatory minimum sentence of 2 years for having a gun in a club, and stallworth gets 30 days for killing a guy. Only in America.

[dadmg]

Originally Posted by barrett

Stallworth just got 30 days in jail for KILLING someone while driving drunk. Apparently the lower sentence was influenced by the fact that he had already reached a financial agreement with the family of the victim. And this is apparently normal practice for a sentence to be shorter if the settlement is reached ahead of time. Unbelievable. You should get more than 30 days for drunk driving without hurting anyone.

Stallworth was also facing a mandatory minimum of four years for his initial charges...presumably the plea was to lesser charges.

It should also be noted that after the month in jail, Stallworth will also spend an additional two years under house arrest. Obviously, that's a considerably lighter sentence than he was facing, but two years house arrest isn't trivial, either.

[barrett]

Originally Posted by dadmg

Stallworth was also facing a mandatory minimum of four years for his initial charges...presumably the plea was to lesser charges.

It should also be noted that after the month in jail, Stallworth will also spend an additional two years under house arrest. Obviously, that's a considerably lighter sentence than he was facing, but two years house arrest isn't trivial, either.

He's just lucky that he didn't kill some dogs while he was driving drunk. That would have been 2 years in prison easy.

[dadmg]

Originally Posted by barrett

He's just lucky that he didn't kill some dogs while he was driving drunk. That would have been 2 years in prison easy.

Far be it from me to defend drunk driving, especially drunk driving with such tragic consequences, but I don't see equivalency between one night of utter rank stupidity and carelessness to years of willful covert operation of a massive dog-fighting ring (let alone the 'getting his hands dirty' aspect - killing dogs by his own hand - that gets a lot of people). Donte Stallworth's crime was awful and he should be punished but comparing it to Vick's is really apples and oranges. A better comparison to Vick would probably be some of the frequent wife-or-girlfriend beaters who remain perpetually employed by their clubs because their skills are great enough and/or the NFL and sports media don't really want to draw more attention to some of the violent things their athletes do off the gridiron. With this group there is the same level of intent and, with at least a couple, the long-range perpetration of horror.

[papabear]

Originally Posted by dadmg

Far be it from me to defend drunk driving, especially drunk driving with such tragic consequences, but I don't see equivalency between one night of utter rank stupidity and carelessness to years of willful covert operation of a massive dog-fighting ring (let alone the 'getting his hands dirty' aspect - killing dogs by his own hand - that gets a lot of people). Donte Stallworth's crime was awful and he should be punished but comparing it to Vick's is really apples and oranges. A better comparison to Vick would probably be some of the frequent wife-or-girlfriend beaters who remain perpetually employed by their clubs because their skills are great enough and/or the NFL and sports media don't really want to draw more attention to some of the violent things their athletes do off the gridiron. With this group there is the same level of intent and, with at least a couple, the long-range perpetration of horror.

killing a human is obviously worse than killing a dog, so on the surface it seems like Stallworth's sentence should be longer than Vicks's (and it's easy to make a case for it). The difference is that Vick's animal cruelty charges were only a small part of it. He was also facing an assortment of organized crime charges. Running a gambling operation, tax evasion, etc. There were many many counts of each. Stalworth made one bad decision and accidentally caused a death. It's a terrible terrible thing, but Vick was prosecuted under federal laws that were designed to shut down the mob in which they had years and years of evidence of his crimes. I'm not defending Stallworth at all. Just pointing out why there seems to be such an imbalance in the sentences that he and Vick received.

[barrett]

I know why the imbalance was there and recognize that it was federal vs local handling the cases.

I also agree it is apples to oranges since we are talking about people and dogs.