AFFLUENZA DEFENSE - 16 year found not guilty

this is just unbelievable

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — The American Psychiatric Association says it does not recognize the diagnosis of 'affluenza,' that a psychologist said a wealthy North Texas teenager suffered from when he killed four pedestrians while driving drunk.

The association says Thursday there is no such diagnosis in its most recent manual published in May.

A defense attorney argued that the 16-year-old boy should not get the maximum 20-year prison sentence that prosecutors had sought due to this diagnosis.

A Fort Worth juvenile court sentenced the boy Tuesday to 10 years of probation after he confessed to intoxication manslaughter in the June 15 accident.

Defense witness psychologist Gary Miller says the boy grew up in a house where the parents were preoccupied with arguments that led to a divorce and that he suffered from "affluenza."

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Wikipedia definition of AFFLUENZA

Affluenza, a portmanteau of affluence and influenza, is a term used by critics of consumerism. The book Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic defines it as "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more".[1]

Proponents of the term consider that the prizing of endless increases in material wealth may lead to feelings of worthlessness and dissatisfaction rather than experiences of a 'better life', and that these symptoms may be usefully captured with the metaphor of a disease. They claim some or even many of those who become wealthy will find the economic success leaving them unfulfilled and hungry only for more wealth, finding that they are unable to get pleasure from the things they buy and that increasingly material things may come to dominate their time and thoughts to the detriment of personal relationships and to feelings of happiness.[2]

A potential criticism of the idea of affluenza is that it presents subjective social critique as an objective, inevitable and debilitating illness.

 

Gotta be great to be rich and white damn

 

a close girlfriend of mine has a son that was convicted of vehicular manslaughter here in Colorado...he was not drunk...not on any drugs...not texting...he was driving his work truck and lost control...one teenage boy was killed...it was heartbreaking for his mom and he will never be the same knowing he killed someone

he spent almost a year in jail. lost his license and continues to be on probation...they used a public defender because it was just too costly for a defense attorney

for the most part money can buy you freedom

I can't for the life of me figure out why Michael Douglas can't get his son out of prison

 

Gotta love money and the lives you can take by having enough of it.

 

At the risk of being nitpicky, a sentence of probation doesn't mean that he was found not guilty. In fact, it's just the opposite. It means that he decided not to risk going to trial and instead decided to accept responsibility.

Even with that said, that's about as bullshit of a legal defense as you're going to get.

 

i had to look it up...I have never heard of anything so absurd

 

I fear that this defense will catch on like The Twinkie Defense.