Maybe next time the judge will be more "fair" and simply sentence him to the 8 years in prison he could have gotten.
Totally. This young man, 19, shoots a 15 year old boy in the face, twice, in a drive-by-shooting in January. He makes bond and then, in May, assaults his former girlfriend after the school prom. Add in to that he's charged with violating a protective order in the same incident, presumably one filed by that former girlfriend previously and granted due to a finding of violence on a previous occasion. So his bond is revoked and he's sent back to jail, where he builds up some time served credit that's applied to his jail sanction. But it's the court's fault that he's going to "end up in a life of crime" now, forgetting the life of crime he's been leading. It's the court's fault that he's deprived of his "only way of making a living", forgetting that it was the shooting that led Tennessee and other schools recruiting him to revoke their scholarship offers. That door had already been basically closed, by this defendant himself. He's a former star HS athlete, which means he had a maybe 1% chance of ending up making any sort of living as a pro before all this legal trouble. He needs to grow up and learn a trade, or flip burgers, or go to school and get a degree, do something to put a roof over his head and food on the table. Believe it or not, it is possible for him to learn another skill besides the one he has, even one in an industry that hires more than 250 or so people a year.
OK, I get that you guys just love chewing on hyperbole. Awesome. But how about someone defend the reasoning behind this judge's decision. Anyone care to take up that cause? Anyone? How is this an effective punishment that will increase his chances of becoming a productive member of society? How exactly did SPORTS cause this, or deserve to be ANY part of the sentencing?
Shooting someone with a BB gun can land you eight years in prison, but shooting yourself in the foot in a crowded nightclub will get you only two years?
http://www.wlwt.com/news/20984966/detail.html Judge says that being a star athlete gave Hunter a sense of entitlement, leading him to say let's see who the person is, not just who the star athlete is. Maybe sports didn't have a direct influence in this. Hell, maybe it was the only way out of a bad family situation, poverty, whatever else. Maybe it was his only release. But I do agree with the judge when he says: "Find out who you really are without this whole aura of the athletics around you, because quite frankly, in some ways, it's made you a Frankenstein monster," the judge said.
Perhaps sports didn't directly cause this. But sports aren't being punished: Dwayne Hunter is being punished. And they are punishing him by taking away his one "out" in life: that no matter what he law he broke or who he hurt, as long as he ran the 40 in 4.5, he'd be forgiven. Remember: he'd already lost a chance at playing college ball due to legal trouble. This is a young man whose life is going nowhere fast, and perhaps this judge is trying to HELP him by making him get a job or an education instead of becoming the next Maurice Clarett. Or Plaxico Burress. Or (insert any other football criminal here)...
