Apologies if I've posted this before but I can't find the thread. This was a fantastic read, actually, if you never heard of them during when this was happening, the whole thing would read like fiction. The Dougherty Gang Crime Story I will fully admit that what Ryan did was fucked up. I have low tolerance for that, but what proceeded was an abortion of justice and laws in place and executed. After sentencing, Ryan had to report immediately to a probation officer, who told him he wouldn't be able to attend his son's birth or live in the same house with him. He made a frantic call to his lawyer, who reassured him an emergency motion would be filed that would allow him to live with his son. Then the probation officer said he had to fit Ryan with an ankle monitor, and Ryan felt he'd been sucker punched—the judge hadn't mentioned anything about that, either. Ryan would have to pay $240 a month to wear the monitor, the officer told him. He made less than a thousand a month. How were he and Amber and the baby going to survive?So already we are making a bad situation worse. Sounds like nothing was explained properly to Ryan as to what will happen and what the repercussions of a guilty plea was. I am also appalled by the fee on the ankle bracelet. I am all for punishing perps but what's happening here is that it's making a desperate situation more desperate by 1000X fold. It gets worse: At eight o'clock that night, another probation officer met with Ryan and Amber at the house in Lacoochee. The meeting started out badly, with the P.O. telling Ryan, "Eighty percent of the people on your type of probation fail and go to prison." He went on to say that if Ryan didn't get permission from the judge, either he or Amber and the baby would have to find somewhere else to live. And even if the judge let them all live together, Ryan still wouldn't be able to take his son anyplace where other kids would be—no trips to the playground, no picking him up at school when the time came, no Chuck E. Cheese's, no Little League games.Again, Ryan's cleaning himself up was largely due to the son about to be born. Why wasn't this explained to him before and during the trial process? Then we come to the mother of all abortions in this catalyst: But Ryan had a more immediate problem, one that was going to get him thrown into prison. He didn't have mail service—the house in Lacoochee didn't even have a mailbox—and he needed two pieces of mail in order to obtain an ID that reflected his status as a sex offender. The P.O. told him that, by law, he had forty-eight hours to fix this, to get mail delivered to a house without a mailbox in an area that had no mail service. All of Ryan's pleading for more time left the P.O. unmoved. "That's your all's problem," he told them. As he left the house that night, he said, "I'll be back in forty-eight hours to arrest you." He said it without heat, almost casually. Just like that, Ryan was going to be locked away for fifteen years. Just like that, his life was over. Really over, because Ryan was sure he wouldn't survive his sentence: "People like me get stabbed in prison, we get beat to death." The way he figured it, he had forty-eight hours left to live. Uhm, what the flipping fuck happened here? Anyway, obviously I am no fan of shooting at the cop's car, even if he was aiming for tires, robberies, etc... I am just appalled how the legal process was part of the problem from the beginning and made a bad situation tragic.
I'm a bit torn on this one. Regardless of what pushed him towards that final straw, he still knew the difference between right and wrong. Granted, the system has to take some of the blame here, but it still boils down to making the choice between right and wrong.
I am not blaming the system for the entire episode or even being a catalyst for it (real catalyst was him getting "text" involved with a 13/11 yr old) I am just stating that the system didn't help, at best, and definitely made things worse. Fortunately, no one was killed or maimed but the outcome could have been so much worse.
