Judge "Sick" Rick Howard
Well given that the white kids weren't wearing their seat belts, they died. So the obvious answer is--charge the black kid with vehicular manslaughter. After all, he's a good student, has no criminal record and works 35 hours a week washing trucks at a truck stop.
But then what to do when the state Department of Corrections, after investigating the case, recommended that the young black kid be sentenced to two years of community control followed by two years of probation?
Oh easy. Give him the maximum sentence--30 years, and order the kid (whose name is William Thornton IV) to serve it in an adult facility. And that's exactly what Circuit Judge Ric Howard did. But not before announcing to all assembled that he'd sentenced the kid's father to prison too.
Howard shouldn't be on the bench. This kind of reprehensible vindictive grandstanding shouldn't be tolerated. "Judge" Howard aught to be ashamed of himself.
Like so many other callous judges who care only for tough on crime headlines, he's thrown away another life--for no reason, costing the state a million dollars or so along the way. Shame shame shame.
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9 comments:
Somehow I don't think that all the right-wing complaints about out-of-control judges were refering to judges like this.
Well the dude killed two people through his reckless negligence? Doesn't sound unreasonable weighed against that. It's within the statutorily permitted sentence, isn't it? So the judge didn't slap him on the wrist like the social workers wanted.
Get over it... he's the judge, you're not, thank goodness.
By the way, no link to a source we could all go see what the crime was really like without your filtering bias? Neat.
By the way, whether the victims were intoxicated is irrelevant, unless it somehow made the defendant's conduct NOT reckless, right? And why is it important to you that the victims were white? If you're gonna accuse the judge, who you don't even know, of racism, why not have the balls to just do it instead of being a slimemeister?
And since you're no doubt opposed to mandatory guidelines, I'm sure you're glad the judge had the discretion to disregard them.
How many of us have sped slightly and rolled through a stop sign? Especially at a young age? Can this conduct really be called recklessly negligent - to the point where it deserves the death penalty? A sentence of this kind will destroy this young person's life, render him unemployable and probably turn him into an actual, factual criminal. Heck, when Govenors and Congressmen run stop signs and squish people, they get a year or two in lock up.
Lt Gov. Mark Taylor's son was driving drunk, wrecked the car and killed his best friend. Where is he today? In prison? No-he got rehab!! Think your son or my son would get rehab? Think again.
Not to mention Laura Bush...
To the person who stated That it is okay for the sentence ,because William killed 2 people .
You also said The owner of this blog has misrepresented the facts.
Your SOOOOOOOO off base.
Let me clear you up on this. I live down that road ,have for 5 years .I went to the scene of that accident that night and my and my familys first words were.... I knew something like this would happen.
See ...we have all done the same thing ourselves....the COUNTY is at fault ..YOU can NOT SEE that stop sign . When driving down that hilly road the trees seperate where the road is ,so it looks as though the road carry's on way across the highway ,take that with the fact that there is a VERY SHORT HILL just before the stop sign ,that you can not see and it was a accident waiting to happen as stated my whole family has done the same thing...we were just LUCKY noone was driving the highway at that precise moment...Also they estimated williams speed at 55mph saying there were 100 ft of skid marks ..THIS IS A BLATANT LIE! I saw those marks the next day and every day there after till they faded ...they were 30 ft or under!!! Those marks were a conctant reminder to me and my family about that horrible road ..
Williams fault ...NO NO NO ...Heres what should have happened .
Count 1 : The penalty for driving without a liscense .... The vehicular homicide ... It was an OBVIOUS TRAGIC accident .
There was not excessive speed involved ..William was not under the influence and the young boy did all he could to stop ..even put on the emergemcy brake! Stayed at the scence ..offered himself up to the court under poor judicial guidence and got SCREWED !
Yes my deepest sympothys to the family's of the victims ,however this being more of ANYTHING then a tragic accident is a CRIME in itself.
A side note ..I see that road daily ...The people that were hit should have been wearing seatbelts ,not drinking ,they both had double the legal limit of alcohol and Cocaine residue was found in their truck .
Judge howard recently sentenced a young boy 10 or 12 years for taking some beer out of a refrigerator of his neighbors garage ..yes he went into the open garage into the fridge and swiped a beer ...10 or 12 years ... Yeah ..I'd like to see what MR. Howard past looks like ..matter of fact just how HONORABLE the judge is even now .. Would be interesting !
You people are posting stuff like you were there, Most of it is incorrect. William Thornton was speeding down the road to get back to his pregnant girlfriend in Wildwood, she was at work at McDonalds. Brandon and Sara were heading home after her shift at the Outback. Brandon had one drink while waiting for her to finish, She had NO alcohol in her system at all. According to the police report and from what I saw the skid marks were over 100ft. The girl who said they were not does not know how to measure or estimate. Also, you say that William Thornton stayed at the scene to help out. He was airlifted to Tampa so I guess he did not stay to be a nice guy. He was hurt in the accident although not badly. Also, after the accident thornton went out and got his drivers license and hit a car in a parking lot. He shows no remorse for what he has done.
All i gotta say is that i went to school with Willie since 6th grade and it hurts to see him locked up like this. It hurts all of the friends he had. Judge howard is a chump for doing this. Out of all the cases that you had, do u really think that he needed thirty years? Come on now, those two kids had freakin cocaine in their car and was DRUNK!! I'm srry but i don't like this at all. there should something done about this.
-Felton Kinchen-
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