The Houston Chronicle reports that David Rodriguez, 31, was a drug
runner who was being watched by undercover San Antonio police for running
marijuana. They watched him load 400
pounds of weed into his SUV and start to transport it. They had set up a checkpoint, which he ran and
started a chase that led him to go high speed down the wrong way on a highway
access road and run head-on into a car driven by Jimmy and Regina Maspero. The resulting wreck killed their two
children, Wesley Maspero, 1, and Walter Maspero, 3.
On Friday, he was found guilty of
murder in the traffic death. Though he
may not have intended to kill the children, their deaths occurred in the process
of other felonies that he did intend to commit (illegal transport of narcotics,
evading arrest, etc.). The jury heard
from the Masperos, and heard how their children would never grow up. Mrs. Maspero was crying and said: “He handed out a life sentence to Wesley. He
handed out a life sentence to Walter,” she said. “And he deserves every day of
the life sentence you can give to him.”
The jury deliberated and gave
Rodriguez life in prison.
This is contrasted to what’s been
going on in Fort Worth, where a rich white kid, Ethan Couch, suffering from “afflluenza” or
being coddled form life’s hard lessons by his parents, apparently led him to
get drunk (triple the legal limit), get behind the wheel of a truck with a bed
full of passengers, and run over four pedestrians, killing all four pedestrians
and paralyzing two of the kids in the truck.
That rich white kid, he got ten years probation and placement in a very
expensive alcohol treatment center in California that his parents promised to
pay for. (See Chronicle coverage).
The prosecutor in Fort Worth,
facing backlash and potentially embarrassment over the judge’s sentencing of the
rich white kid, has decided to try the cases of the paralyzed kids in the back
of the truck to try to get some jail time for the drunk driver.
Two cases. People dead in both. In neither one did the driver intend to kill
the people he killed. But he did kill them in the process of committing another
crime. One was Hispanic and in the drug
trade and got life in prison. The other was rich and white and got
probation. Justice is supposed to be
blind. It isn’t. There was a great article in The Atlantic about what a white guy in a suit
and tie can do that is blatantly illegal in New York and not get bothered by
police. See here. It is rare, though, to
have two cases in one state in a short amount of time with such juxtaposed
sentences. When justice isn’t blind,
citizens lose faith in it. They lose
faith fast.
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