One thing I will never understand is why killing a child so often results in so little jail time provided that the person who does the killing is the parent of the child.
Consider the case of 22-year-old Tiffany Trice and her 18-month-old daughter, Victoria Miller.
Victoria died on August 5, 2002. Trice plead guilty to reckless homicide in her death — her plea agreement stipulated that she still maintains her innocence but that concedes there is enough evidence against her to obtain a conviction.
Trice punched her daughter so hard in the stomach and chest that she bruised the little girl’s aorta, leading to her death.
Trice had been held in jail for 14 months awaiting trial. Want to guess how much additional time she’ll spend in jail? Three years? Two years? Surely at least one year.
Well, the plea agreement called for a five year sentence, but the judge in the case released Trice on probation. Provided she doesn’t violate the terms of her probation, she won’t serve a single additional day in prison.
Absolutely disgusting.
Source:
Woman pleads guilty to reckless homicide. Courier-Journal News (Louisville, Kentucky), August 30, 2003.
Local Mom Who Killed Daughter Will Go Free. The Louisville.Com Channel, 2003.