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Texas ‘Affluenza’ Teen Captured In Mexico, To Be Returned To The United States

Texas ‘Affluenza’ Teen Captured In Mexico, To Be Returned To The United States

By Marice Richter and David Alire Garcia

FORT WORTH, Texas/PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (Reuters) – A rich Texas teen who fled with his mother to Mexico to avoid possible jail time for breaking his probation in a fatal drunken-driving crash had planned the flight in advance, even holding a farewell party, U.S. authorities said on Tuesday.

Ethan Couch, who became known in the United States as the “affluenza” teen during his trial in juvenile court over the deaths of four people in the 2013 crash, was captured by Mexican authorities on Monday in the Pacific Coast beach city of Puerto Vallarta and was likely to be returned to the United States later on Tuesday.

During Couch’s trial, a psychologist sparked outrage by saying in his defense he was so wealthy and spoiled he could not tell the difference between right and wrong. He was sentenced to 10 years drug-and-alcohol-free probation for intoxication manslaughter – a punishment that critics condemned as privilege rewarded with leniency.

Couch, now 18, and his mother, Tonya Couch, fled the country after a video surfaced online apparently showing Couch at a party where beer was being consumed. Authorities had been investigating that video as a potential parole violation.

Couch had missed a mandatory meeting with his probation officer, prompting officials in Tarrant County, Texas, to issue a warrant for his arrest earlier this month.

Couch and his 48-year-old mother were tracked down and captured near Puerto Vallarta’s seafront promenade. Mexican authorities said they had been working with the U.S. Marshals Service since Saturday to locate the pair.

The mother and son apparently entered Mexico by land, said Ricardo Vera, a local official for Mexico’s National Migration Institute. He said the two did not register when entering Mexico, but it was not clear where they came in. They were expected to be returned to Houston on a commercial flight later on Tuesday from Jalisco’s state capital, Guadalajara, he said.

“They had planned to disappear,” Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson told a news conference in Fort Worth, Texas. “They even had something that was almost akin to a going-away party before they left town.”

When they arrived back in the United States, Couch would appear in juvenile court and his mother would be arrested for hindering an apprehension, Anderson said.

Ethan Couch’s attorney, Reagan Wynn, declined to comment, saying in a statement he had not had the chance yet to speak with his client.

In Puerto Vallarta, eyewitness Cristina Barraza said she saw Tonya Couch’s arrest. She was led with hands behind her head by a man in plain clothes to a white pickup truck in front of a modest four-story building where the pair were reportedly staying.

Afterwards, the vehicle sped off, said Barraza, saying she did not see Ethan Couch during the arrest.

She also recalled an exchange with the mother last week as she sat outside her home on the sidewalk across the street. “She came along here and greeted me in Spanish. She was nice.”

BLOND TO DARK-HAIRED

A police booking picture from Mexico showed the previously blond Ethan Couch with dark hair, which the sheriff said suggested Couch was trying to change his appearance.

Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson said that she expected the judge to hold Couch after his juvenile hearing, and that she hoped it would be in an adult jail.

At a previously scheduled Jan. 19 court hearing, Wilson had planned to ask a judge to transfer Couch’s case into the adult court system from the juvenile system, putting Couch under stricter supervision and leaving him open to harsher punishment if he violated probation.

If he were in the adult system, Couch could face 120 days in jail for not meeting with his probation officer as required, and he would face up to 40 years in prison if he violated probation again after that, Wilson said.

However, the double jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution would preclude any attempt to get Couch a stiffer sentence on the manslaughter charges in the adult system, said former New York City prosecutor Paul Callan.

U.S. Marshal Rick Taylor and Anderson declined to say how authorities tracked Couch down, but CNN said the marshals used Couch’s mobile phone to track him down.

‘HANDS-OFF’ PARENTING

In the fatal accident, Couch, then 16, was speeding and had a blood-alcohol level of nearly three times the legal limit when he lost control of his pickup truck and fatally struck a stranded motorist on the side of the road and three people who had stopped to help.

Susan Cloud, a friend of Brian Jennings, one of those killed, said she felt conflicted about what should happen to Couch, but wished he had not thrown away his second chance under his probation.

“I feel more negatively toward his mother than I do him,” Cloud said. “The parents seem to have a completely hands-off approach.”

Sheriff Anderson said last week that the passports for Couch and his mother had been reported missing by the teen’s father, who has cooperated with investigators. Fred Couch is divorced from the mother and owns a successful sheet metal business near Fort Worth.

The “affluenza” term was apparently used for the first time explicitly in defense during Couch’s trial, but has been a theory in sociological and psychological circles since the late 1990s to explain the impact of indulgent parenting, said Daniel Medwed, a criminal law professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

But the notion of rich kids getting leniency based on their advantages sparked a public backlash against the theory, Medwed said, adding, “My hunch is this latest parole incident will mark the end of its use.

(Additional reporting by Anahi Rama and Veronica Gomez in Mexico City, Robert Iafolla in Washington, Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida and Melissa Fares in New York; Writing by Ben Klayman; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Frances Kerry)

U.S. national Ethan Couch is pictured in this undated handout photograph made available to Reuters on December 29, 2015 by the Jalisco state prosecutor office.  REUTERS/Fiscalia General del Estado de Jalisco/Handout via Reuters 

Income Inequality Creates Huge Gaps In Opportunity

Income Inequality Creates Huge Gaps In Opportunity

By now, you’ve surely heard of the Texas drunken-driving case that has sparked national outrage — angering victims, upsetting psychologists and sending Twitter into overdrive. A 16-year-old who killed four people while intoxicated was sentenced to 10 years’ probation and treatment in a tony rehab facility.

As unusual as that example of mercy may be, it was the rationale offered by a defense expert that drove observers into a frenzy. A psychologist hired by defense attorneys told the court that the young man’s tragically irresponsible actions were the fault of his rich parents, who didn’t rear him with sufficient discipline. As a consequence, G. Dick Miller said, the teenager suffered from “affluenza” and didn’t know right from wrong. (Many other psychologists have disagreed vociferously, saying there is no such diagnosis.)

It’s hard to stomach that notion, especially since Judge Jean Boyd of the Fort Worth Juvenile Court seems to have swallowed it whole. I can’t imagine how bitter and resentful — not to mention mystified — the victims’ families must be.

But Boyd might have unintentionally done us a favor by opening the door to a dank, dark room that we have worked too hard to keep closed. She has let out the putrid aromas of economic inequality, which we have long ignored. Wealthy people, the judge’s sentence reminds us, have huge advantages over ordinary folk, despite an American mythology about equal opportunity. And the opportunity gap is growing as inequality cleaves the country into haves and have-nots.

The very terms “wage gap” and “disappearing middle class” have become clichés in Washington, often muttered by pandering politicians and comfortable journalists who have little real understanding of the effect that income inequality has had on the lives of ordinary Americans. But the fallout is real enough.

Since the 1970s, the wages of working-class Americans — those without college degrees — have stagnated and fallen further and further behind. Meanwhile, the wealthy have only become more prosperous.

Despite what you may believe to be true, the individual’s work ethic has little to do with those results. No matter how hardworking you are, a job at Walmart won’t give you much in the way of financial security. And if you are born to parents who can give you a trust fund, it doesn’t matter how little you work; you’ll still have plenty of security.

The trends that have eaten away at the great American middle — including globalization and technological gains — have been evident for decades, but the Great Recession accelerated the consequences. Even as economic data show huge gains in productivity, the jobless rate remains high, stuck at around 7 percent. (Translation: Companies have found ways to get more and more work done with technology, whether it’s through eliminating bank tellers and installing more ATMs, or using more robots in factories.)

This is a complex problem with no easy answers, but we could make a start toward solutions by looking squarely at the issue and refusing to call it by other names. Here are a few things it’s not: indolence, racism, the failure of the welfare state.

Mitt Romney became appropriately infamous for his condescending dismissal of the “47 percent” who he claimed don’t want to work, but that wrong-headed idea doesn’t stop with Romney. U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), running for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate, has proposed that poor children sweep school cafeteria floors in exchange for free or reduced lunches, a deal that would get the “myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch,” he said.

But liberals often get it wrong, too — confusing rampant income inequality with racism. The legacy of racism has certainly contributed to the wealth gap between black and white Americans, but class is now a bigger factor in a child’s future than race. President Obama’s children are virtually assured a bright future, while millions of their cohort among the working classes are not.

The class divide is one of the biggest problems now facing the country, and it’s time we started to confront it. Judge Boyd’s unjust sentence is just the provocation to force us to take it on.

(Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

Photo: Jeffrey Simms Photography via Flickr