Four years ago this week, a person I was in Cub Scouts with and sat next to in many classes and even attended a sleepover for a birthday was covicted of a double murder of two women. He is serving a life sentence without parole in a Georgia prison. At the same time, a person I went to school with but never hung around with shot and killed his estranged wife and he is in another Georgia prison for the rest of his life.
Neither of these men have any of my sympathies. They knew what they were doing. They can say it was a mistake or a temporarily lost of sanity, but they did it. And they have to spend the rest of their lives in prisons for the three lives they took. I don’t know if anyone spoke of them on their behalf. The mother of the one person I knew helped my late girlfriend get a job a couple of years before. His brother said they were friends with the vicitms’ families making things difficult for them.
That happens. I was at a sentencing hearing in 2008 for a man who had shot his wife twice, killing her. It was a tough sentencing to sit through mainly because you saw people on both sides of the aisle who had grown up around each other. They had worked together and were friendly for years. Now, they’re having to take sides. As the family for the victim was leaving, one of the older men leaned over when he saw another man and shook his hand, asked him how he was just being cordial. I had never seen anything like that in a court room.
No, usually it’s the Hatfields vs. the McCoys. And most of the time, the family and friends of the charged know the family and friends of the victims. And things could be ugly. During a brutal aggrravated assault and battery case that could be attempted murder but there is no offense in Georgia, a family member of the defendant had the nerve to let it out that the victim’s cousin had attempted suicide. Rather than go after her, she screamed at and ran out of the courtroom. I think the judge should’ve fined them for contempt for saying that. I would’ve if it was me, telling her there’s nothing she can say if she’s going to start insulting other people in the courtroom.
Not all judges are the same. Recently, Danny Masterson, who was an actor, was sentenced to 30 years for the rape of two women. His co-stars, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, on the show That ’70s Show, wrote letters for Masterson to the judge. These recently came out in public. But what did Kutcher and Kunis, who are married, think was going to happen? Pretty much anytime you write a letter to a judge during a criminal case, it’s entered in a public record.
Following the backlash, Kutcher and Kunis made a video that many say didn’t sound so sincere. It doesn’t. It feels more like they were caught doing something they knew they shouldn’t, but trying to say something not to make both parties upset. They said they were asked by Masterson’s family. While I respect what kind of relationship they had with Mastersons and while they may not have known any of what was happening, they should’ve said no. Kutcher has been years helping organizations and advocating for crackdowns on child sex trafficking, so defending a friend/former colleague of rape makes him out to be a hypocrite. He recently stepped down as Board Chair of Thorn, the anti-child abuse organization he founded in 2009.
There comes a point where you got to cut your friends loose. When they’re convicted of heinous crimes like rape, murder or assault and battery, it’s time to take a stand. You may have had a good friend or family member, but they hurt someone else. And sometimes, it’s more important to offer support to a stranger that has been victimized than someone who was two-faced to you. You might lose your circle of friends or even some family members, but ask yourself this question – Why would you want to be with people who defend a murderer or a rapist?
Around the same time, Kutcher and Kunis were trying to play damage control, Jeff Lebby, offensive coordinator for the University of Oklahoma football team, seemed he couldn’t care at all his father-in-law Art Briles was being allowed on the sidelines of games. Briles was the football couch of Baylor University from 2012 to 2016 and both he and Baylor President Ken Starr (yeah, that Ken Starr of all people) came under fire on allegations they did little to nothing to properly handle the sexual assault and misconduct of several players.
Briles left Baylor in 2016 and filed a wrongful termination lawsuit that was settled in 2018 in his favor. Regardless, it happened in the wake of the Penn State case involving Jerry Sandusky and Joe Paterno as well as the Stubenville, Ohio rape scandal. And coming as it did at Oklahoma where less than a decade ago, the Sigma Alpha Epsilen frat sang a song that used the N-word and mentioned lynching that gave the school a black eye, it wasn’t good for Briles to be there. Also, SAE as the frat is abbreviated has also been called “Sexual Assault Expected” for the number of sexual assaults reported among the entire fraternity organization across the country.
Briles shouldn’t been on the sidelines. And Lebby should’ve known not to invite him as well as act smug toward the media when questioned. His apology wasn’t as sincere either as he said that he just wanted Briles to be on the sidelines with his family as OU celebrated a win. Briles didn’t have a pass to be on the sidelines. Both OU head coach Brent Venables and athletic director Joe Castiglione have been more vocal saying it shouldn’t have happened. “It was my expectation it never would, based on boundaries we previously set,” Castiglione said.
Depending on how OU performs this season is probably a good bet if Lebby has a job next season. I think they might commit damage control and just cut him loose in the future on the off-chance Lebby tries to sneak Briles on the sidelines again. If Briles and Lebby don’t see a problem, maybe we should rethink why we have colleges and universities. Are they supposed to be used for research, academia and arts and entertainment or just for athletics. Some of the Baylor athletes had issues had previous colleges so like the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, it was just passing one problem off to another.
I know people like college football, but there are thousands, if not millions of students going to college each year and their goal isn’t to play sports. They shouldn’t have to be around people who have a history of violence, especially sexual abuse, just because a college wants to win an athletic title. There are ways to do things without punishing those who didn’t do anything wrong.
In 2012, the Wagoner Chamber of Commerce honored the high school football team that had just won a state championship. It was their first one. Earlier that year, two of the football players had been arrested and charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman. I took some criticism from the football coach for even reporting this but he’ll get his due some day. There’s always a bigger fish.
Anyway, I felt it was wrong for the Chamber to invite the two accused the dinner and much to my surprise, they were absent from the annual banquet. This wasn’t always the case in that town. Two school officials in two unrelated cases had stolen monies from the school district in excess of six figures and they were still treated like they hadn’t done anything wrong. So, they did the right thing by having the student athletes who had done the right things at the banquet and leaving the two accused at home.
I think the problem is people always expect us to take the sides of people we’ve known for a long time. But if you do that, you’ll look like a hypocrite. Recently, Zach Bryan, a country-western musician was arrested in Vinita, Okla. about 30-40 miles east of Tulsa. Bryan was arrested for interfering with an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper who had pulled over a bodyguard of Bryan who was driving in another vehicle. The trooper told Bryan to move away from the vehicle. He gave Bryan a warning. Bryan shot his mouth off and was arrested.
Now, I have a lot of issues with law enforcement overstepping their duties. But I saw the video, this trooper did everything by the book. He gave Bryan a warning. Bryan didn’t want to listen. Even when Bryan was in handcuffs and said they were too tight, the trooper loosened them. That was more than what Tamir Rice, Philando Castile and George Floyd received. Yet, the people who have been “Back the Blue” took to social media and said the trooper shouldn’t have arrested Bryan, who had walked up to the vehicle as the trooper was conducting a routine traffic stop. The trooper didn’t know if the driver was trying to pass something to Bryan or what was happening.
All we hear about is how people “should’ve complied” before a cop unloads a dozen .40 caliber slugs in someone’s back. But here was a case where Bryan should’ve complied. And he didn’t. Then, he tried to issue an apology video, probably because his management and PR firm made him. And people were so forgiving and said Bryan was acting so polite admitting he made a mistake. Yeah, guess what skin color Bryan is and since he’s a country-western singer, I guess that makes it ok.
We all make mistakes in life. But hypocrisy is something different.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 