On an evening of April 2018, Virginia’s SUV collided with a stalled black jeep along a dark stretch of a higher-traffic roadway. After crawling out of her vehicle, she ran to the other vehicle to provide support; soon after the paramedics arrived, she learned the others badly injured and would need- along with her- hospital care. Although her team is grateful of each parties full recovery, there have been outstanding consequences stemming from that night that will alter her life forever.

The reason over 3-years ago is important is because Virginia and her family have been suffering all of that time, over 10% of Virginia’s life, with the court compliance and horrible anticipatory anxiety that created the total reality of imprisonment. Why? This is because Virginia could be deemed a criminal and be sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 2-years in prison, not the place for a vulnerable, nice-looking, 101-pound person with disabilities and COVID concerns.

Mandatory minimum sentencing masks the Judge’s ability to consider all other facts and circumstances.

Similarly masking, is Virginia’s bleeding face shown on the internet is not from the accident, a concussion and shock yes, but that bleeding was from an unhinged police man stepping on her neck.

Someone might say that the postponement of trial is Virginia’s fault, but that is not true because it was virtually impossible to retain a competent attorney due to the likely looming of a mandatory minimum sentence.

Further, Virginia is a fragile person struggling to overcome her learning differences haunted her throughout her life, she needed a reasonable chance to gather herself so as to relate to counsel and properly plead her case.

Most understand that the unintended consequences of mandatory sentencing, corrupts the judicial process because a Judge’s sentencing powers are replaced by a career paid prosecutor who wields unchecked absolute power over an accused. The outcome of the minimum  sentence advances a prosecutor’s career and political notice, while it creates criminals out of the defendants.