Ten years probation.

That’s what a Tarrant County teenager got for killing four people while driving drunk. In fact, Ethan Couch’s blood-alcohol level was three times the minimum legal definition of drunken driving.

Four lives are snuffed out and for this the kid gets probation? That’s it?

Amazing.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20131212-despite-four-deaths-tarrant-judge-buys-affluenza-excuse.ece

The judge who handed down this virtual non-punishment is Jean Boyd, who presides over a juvenile court in Fort Worth. As the Dallas Morning News editorial attached here, the judge apparently bought a line of defense that strains credulity to the extreme. The Morning News opined: “Boyd apparently swallowed whole the defense argument that Couch was just a poor, little rich boy effectively abused by parents who set no boundaries and gave him everything except actual parenting. ‘Affluenza,’ as a defense psychologist called it, or wealth assuming privilege.”

Prosecutors sought a 20-year sentence for the kid, who’s now 16. On June 15, his recklessness killed those four people and wounded gravely two others who likely may never recover fully from their injuries. That is a path of death and destruction that cried out for some punishment other than just a probated sentence. As the Morning News noted in its editorial, Couch might have been paroled by his 19th birthday under Texas law had the prosecutors gotten their wish.

Police on the scene called the accident the worst they had seen. Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said he will have trouble explaining probation to his children and grandchildren, given what he witnessed from this crime.

Justice wasn’t done with this decision. Shame on the judge.