She literally explicitly sentenced a defendant to a harsher sentence because she took a plea bargain and was represented by counsel.
A plea from Melanie Daniel, 51, to avoid prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, was rejected. The court sentenced her to the Commissioner of Corrections for 49 months, with a minimum of 32 2/3 months in prison.
www.wctrib.com
I consider that an incredibly irresponsible statement.
She also partly based the sentence on the fact that the defendant dared to be represented by counsel.
She, hired because she was a godly wife of a minister to do small business bookkeeping, had 50 counts of theft/theft by swindle over five years, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, and put two companies out of business, causing 10 people who spent their time doing hard work in a small town to lose their jobs.
And she had the gall to ask for probation so she could get a graduate degree to be a counselor and "help people" (womp, womp), and blamed it all - all 5 years of stealing money from people who explicitly and unquestioningly trusted her - on her desperation to save a messed-up marriage to a gay and cheating minister because of her childhood-originated fear of abandonment. Because tacky vacations (see below) will definitely keep your man.
She spent the money on kid tuition and bills, but also on "everything from the Wisconsin Dells and Europe Rail to Ticketmaster, Amazon, Universal Studio Vacations and Broadway Across America."
Give me a fucking break. She deserved the judge's dressing-down.
And the precipitating statement for the judge's comment about not pleading to everything was that Daniel claimed to be taking full responsibility for her actions.
While asking for probation so she could go get her MA in counseling or whatever, likely from some local online program with a 30% graduation rate. (Which, btw, would not even result in a job that would enable her to pay a penny of the $382k restitution ordered, bc counselors with graduate degrees are a dime a dozen and make very moderate wages, $50-60k/year from the State, which of course as a felon she would not qualify for, so more like $30-40k with a small social services outfit, with no growth potential,
if anyone would hire a multiple felon with a history of exploitation to work with vulnerable populations.).
That's insulting on its face - not to the judge but to the legal system and the people of Minnesota as a whole. No doubt Nick thought he was clever coming up with that penitential story.
It all read as bullshit, because it all was bullshit. The judge was correct.