Dear Judge Jean Boyd,

Your Honor, with all due respect of your station as Juvenile Court Judge of Burleson, (near Fort Worth, Texas), are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind?

You had an opportunity to send a message to a clearly overly indulged young man; one who has obviously had every opportunity given to him by his misguided, yet financially comfortable parents. You could have given a sense of closure to the families of four people who tragically lost their lives when this youth, who was practically pickled with three times the legal limit of alcohol in his body, mowed them down on the side of the road with his pickup truck. You could have given some sense of justice to the two other victims, “friends” of this youth, who were in the box of the pickup, one of whom is unable to speak or move thanks to the traumatic brain injury sustained in this  preventable, AVOIDABLE, motor vehicle collision.

But instead, you created a victim. The accused himself! How he must have suffered being the son of parents who never gave him boundaries! How horrible for him to have gone years with his every whim catered to! We will never know his agony! Thanks to you Judge, we now have a new trendy condition “affluenza”. WTH? I can guarantee you, no one in my home will come down with this quasi-condition.

Way to reward the guilty! And his sad excuse for parents! Junior gets 10 years of probation, starting with a rehab program (I’ve never been to a resort that is as nice as this rehab facility people! Check out the Newport Academy here. BTW it’s putting his daddy back $450,000 a year.) and keeping him away from his parents for at least two years. Whew! What a relief for them! They can continue NOT PARENTING him just has they have been for the past 16 years! At least they won’t have the burden of dragging him around down like a walking, breathing scarlet A on their chest. They can continue ignoring their role in this travesty.

I’m sure you will be getting Christmas cards from other affluent families, whose spoiled brats are looking for loop holes in the justice system. You just set a precedent with a big enough loop-hole to drive a big ol’ Texas-sized pickup through.

Once again, the self-proclaimed “Land of The Free and Home of the Brave” (Land of the Spoiled and Home of the Self Indulged?) is getting it wrong, because even though this sentencing is a farce, the possibility is slim that the sentence can be appealed, because of the finding of guilt and a sentence being handed down. I guess US lawmakers didn’t allow for “not enough” sentencing. The prosecution asked for 25 years in jail, so with the exchange on the dollar, four, eight, carry the one….yup you are looking at 10 years probation.

My heart goes out to the families of the true victims; a young woman with a broken down vehicle, who was being assisted by a youth pastor and a middle-aged woman along with her teenaged daughter – all providing help, trying to do a good deed.

I hope their memories haunt this young man and his family.

And the judge with her misguided sense of “Justice.”