The 'affluenza' defense: lamest of the lame
December 16, 2013 11:37 PM
By Tony Norman / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ethan Couch had a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit when he plowed his father's Ford F-350 pickup into four pedestrians on a June night near Fort Worth, Texas. At 16, Mr. Couch, who also had traces of Valium in his system, managed to kill four people on the side of the road while seriously injuring two of his seven passengers.
Several of Mr. Couch's friends fell out of the back of the pickup that had been traveling at 70 mph in a 40 mph zone when the drunk teenager ran over the victims and collided with their parked cars. Two of his friends were critically injured and one remains only minimally responsive to this day because of severe brain damage.
In the face of such carnage and his inescapable responsibility for a tragedy that was avoidable in every way, Mr. Couch pleaded guilty, thus avoiding a trial and the righteous wrath of a Texas jury. As the son of a wealthy business owner, Mr. Couch was represented by a lawyer who would earn every dollar he was paid during the sentencing phase.
Mr. Couch's lawyer enlisted a psychologist who testified that the hard-partying teenager was an unacknowledged victim of the accident, too.
He may not have been killed or injured during the crash that he caused, but Mr. Couch was a victim all the same, his lawyer asserted: Permissive parenting put him behind the wheel in the first place.
After all, Mr. Couch had been driving since he was 13 with his parents' blessings, further proof that he was the recipient of "freedoms no young person should have." The psychologist argued that because the teenager grew up in the bosom of materialistic excess without limits or boundaries, he doesn't understand that there are consequences for bad behavior.
Describing his client as "emotionally flat" from the weight of having never been denied anything in his young life, the psychologist said that with a couple years of therapy and court-mandated separation from his parents, Ethan Couch could evolve into something approximating a human being.
The psychologist then played his trump card -- Mr. Couch was suffering from a disease of the soul called "affluenza," a moral deficiency that afflicts those cursed with too much money and privilege. (To be sure, it is not recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.)
Judge Jean Boyd listened with a straight face as Mr. Couch's legal team argued that their defendant should be spared 20 years in prison that the state was pushing for because he was born into circumstances that stripped him of moral agency.
Without explaining the logic behind her decision, Judge Boyd sentenced Mr. Couch to a decade of probation and mental health treatment at a $450,000 a year rehabilitation facility in Newport Beach, Calif. Mr. Couch's wealthy parents will pay for it even while dealing with the inevitable blizzard of civil suits that will result from their son's recklessness.
Ironically, Mr. Couch probably would've served only a few years with good behavior had he been sentenced to prison instead of a decade of supervised therapy where a single infraction could put him behind bars for the full 20 years. He's going to have to learn self-discipline and the meaning of "no" in a hurry. Of course, those who knew and loved the victims are outraged by the judge's leniency. This was not the outcome people expected in Gov. Rick Perry's Texas.
Still, affluenza isn't such a novel concept when you think about it. The folks who nearly crashed the economy five years ago never have been held accountable for their acts of lawlessness. Wall Street is raking in record profits again, but the income gap between the rich and the rest of us has never been wider because there is no fear in the corporate suites of punishment from the Obama administration.
Even government bureaucrats are suffering from their version of the malady. On Monday, NBC reported on the audacious defense mounted for John C. Beale. He's a top Environmental Protection Agency official, an expert on climate change, charged with blowing off work for long stretches over a decade and falsely collecting nearly $1 million from the government. Mr. Beale told his colleagues that he couldn't show up for work because he was a "CIA spy" working deep cover in Pakistan. Mr. Beale will be sentenced tomorrow and could get 30 months in prison.
His lawyer is asking for leniency. Without claiming a specific syndrome, he said that his client's "grandiose narratives" were "fueled by his insecurities." He argued that therapy will help him recognize that "beyond the motive of greed, his theft and deception were animated by a highly self-destructive and dysfunctional need to engage in excessively reckless, risky behavior." That's just a polite way of saying his client isn't really the lying thief he appears to be.
It won't be long before lawyers will be arguing that there's a little affluenza in all of us.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1631 or on Twitter @TonyNormanPG.
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4 Comments
Deke James4 hours ago
Had that teen been poor, or middle class, he would have the book thrown at him.
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+2
Oren Spiegler2 hours ago
This disgusting story is one which I became aware of only over this past weekend after seeing a news report about it. We have an expectation that our judges will dispense punishment without regard to the social status of the perpetrator of a horrific crime such as this, one which has destroyed countless lives, but we find that in reality, justice is elusive. I fear that we will see the same phenomenon of different standards of justice in the case of the wealthy executive who is accused of killing two innocent people and an unborn child when his purported suicide attempt went awry. Why is it that so many that claim to have been determined to kill themselves survive the attempt and instead kill innocents?
Reply
+1
Rachel Beres Payne2 hours ago
Let's just hope that the defense's argument of improper child rearing via affluenza leads to criminal negligence charges against the parents. After all, he is a minor & not responsible... *
Reply
+1
Dave Juliette1 hour ago
There actually is a cure for affluenza, and it's a shame that Ethan Couch won't be getting the proper treatment. The cure involves an involuntary injection delivered posteriorly by one's cellmate every night for up to 20 years. Side effects are generally mild and may include some minor bleeding at the injection site. Some patients have reported uncontrolled screaming at time of administration, while others have reported a sudden onset of an affinity for show tunes.
As I said, it's a shame Couch won't be getting the proper treatment.
December 16, 2013 11:37 PM
By Tony Norman / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ethan Couch had a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit when he plowed his father's Ford F-350 pickup into four pedestrians on a June night near Fort Worth, Texas. At 16, Mr. Couch, who also had traces of Valium in his system, managed to kill four people on the side of the road while seriously injuring two of his seven passengers.
Several of Mr. Couch's friends fell out of the back of the pickup that had been traveling at 70 mph in a 40 mph zone when the drunk teenager ran over the victims and collided with their parked cars. Two of his friends were critically injured and one remains only minimally responsive to this day because of severe brain damage.
In the face of such carnage and his inescapable responsibility for a tragedy that was avoidable in every way, Mr. Couch pleaded guilty, thus avoiding a trial and the righteous wrath of a Texas jury. As the son of a wealthy business owner, Mr. Couch was represented by a lawyer who would earn every dollar he was paid during the sentencing phase.
Mr. Couch's lawyer enlisted a psychologist who testified that the hard-partying teenager was an unacknowledged victim of the accident, too.
He may not have been killed or injured during the crash that he caused, but Mr. Couch was a victim all the same, his lawyer asserted: Permissive parenting put him behind the wheel in the first place.
After all, Mr. Couch had been driving since he was 13 with his parents' blessings, further proof that he was the recipient of "freedoms no young person should have." The psychologist argued that because the teenager grew up in the bosom of materialistic excess without limits or boundaries, he doesn't understand that there are consequences for bad behavior.
Describing his client as "emotionally flat" from the weight of having never been denied anything in his young life, the psychologist said that with a couple years of therapy and court-mandated separation from his parents, Ethan Couch could evolve into something approximating a human being.
The psychologist then played his trump card -- Mr. Couch was suffering from a disease of the soul called "affluenza," a moral deficiency that afflicts those cursed with too much money and privilege. (To be sure, it is not recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.)
Judge Jean Boyd listened with a straight face as Mr. Couch's legal team argued that their defendant should be spared 20 years in prison that the state was pushing for because he was born into circumstances that stripped him of moral agency.
Without explaining the logic behind her decision, Judge Boyd sentenced Mr. Couch to a decade of probation and mental health treatment at a $450,000 a year rehabilitation facility in Newport Beach, Calif. Mr. Couch's wealthy parents will pay for it even while dealing with the inevitable blizzard of civil suits that will result from their son's recklessness.
Ironically, Mr. Couch probably would've served only a few years with good behavior had he been sentenced to prison instead of a decade of supervised therapy where a single infraction could put him behind bars for the full 20 years. He's going to have to learn self-discipline and the meaning of "no" in a hurry. Of course, those who knew and loved the victims are outraged by the judge's leniency. This was not the outcome people expected in Gov. Rick Perry's Texas.
Still, affluenza isn't such a novel concept when you think about it. The folks who nearly crashed the economy five years ago never have been held accountable for their acts of lawlessness. Wall Street is raking in record profits again, but the income gap between the rich and the rest of us has never been wider because there is no fear in the corporate suites of punishment from the Obama administration.
Even government bureaucrats are suffering from their version of the malady. On Monday, NBC reported on the audacious defense mounted for John C. Beale. He's a top Environmental Protection Agency official, an expert on climate change, charged with blowing off work for long stretches over a decade and falsely collecting nearly $1 million from the government. Mr. Beale told his colleagues that he couldn't show up for work because he was a "CIA spy" working deep cover in Pakistan. Mr. Beale will be sentenced tomorrow and could get 30 months in prison.
His lawyer is asking for leniency. Without claiming a specific syndrome, he said that his client's "grandiose narratives" were "fueled by his insecurities." He argued that therapy will help him recognize that "beyond the motive of greed, his theft and deception were animated by a highly self-destructive and dysfunctional need to engage in excessively reckless, risky behavior." That's just a polite way of saying his client isn't really the lying thief he appears to be.
It won't be long before lawyers will be arguing that there's a little affluenza in all of us.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1631 or on Twitter @TonyNormanPG.
Post a new comment
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4 Comments
Deke James4 hours ago
Had that teen been poor, or middle class, he would have the book thrown at him.
Reply
+2
Oren Spiegler2 hours ago
This disgusting story is one which I became aware of only over this past weekend after seeing a news report about it. We have an expectation that our judges will dispense punishment without regard to the social status of the perpetrator of a horrific crime such as this, one which has destroyed countless lives, but we find that in reality, justice is elusive. I fear that we will see the same phenomenon of different standards of justice in the case of the wealthy executive who is accused of killing two innocent people and an unborn child when his purported suicide attempt went awry. Why is it that so many that claim to have been determined to kill themselves survive the attempt and instead kill innocents?
Reply
+1
Rachel Beres Payne2 hours ago
Let's just hope that the defense's argument of improper child rearing via affluenza leads to criminal negligence charges against the parents. After all, he is a minor & not responsible... *
Reply
+1
Dave Juliette1 hour ago
There actually is a cure for affluenza, and it's a shame that Ethan Couch won't be getting the proper treatment. The cure involves an involuntary injection delivered posteriorly by one's cellmate every night for up to 20 years. Side effects are generally mild and may include some minor bleeding at the injection site. Some patients have reported uncontrolled screaming at time of administration, while others have reported a sudden onset of an affinity for show tunes.
As I said, it's a shame Couch won't be getting the proper treatment.
