First the jury convicted this 19-year-old maid for stealing. Then they took up a collection to pay h

[proboardslol]

[url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/12/15/a-maid-stole-some-rings-then-returned-them-a-jury-convicted-her-then-paid-her-fine-was-that-right/?utm_term=.5c32477d8cfa]Source[/url]
[quote]The trial seemed utterly ordinary. A 19-year-old maid swiped a woman’s three rings worth at least $5,000 from a house she was cleaning in Fairfax City, Va., but later returned them after the police questioned her. She was charged with felony grand larceny.

What the jury did was extraordinary. They felt bad for the young woman, pregnant with her second child, and agreed that she had made a dumb, youthful mistake. Reluctantly, they convicted her of the felony. But the fine they imposed was her daily pay as a maid, $60. And then they took up a collection and gave her the money to pay the fine.[/quote]

[quote] The jury also was not told that Mendez Ortega apparently is not in the country legally, as Copeland said she was told by prosecutors, because it was not relevant to whether she stole the rings. “I think it’s relevant to the case,” Copeland said. She said the penalties of a felony conviction, such as not being able to vote or buy a gun, would not be actions available to an immigrant in the country illegally anyway.[/quote]

[quote]Jeff Copeland said, “The punishment was she didn’t get paid for the day she stole from us. But then she did get paid for it. That’s changed my whole view of it.”

“She made $20 out of it, too,” Lisa Copeland added[/quote]

edit: Can a mod fix the title?

[Perrine]

Looks like the maid lied about everything really

[quote]She said Mendez Ortega never accepted responsibility for the theft. “If she had accepted accountability, I would be okay with all of this. The fact that she won’t accept accountability makes it wrong.”[/quote]

[quote]Copeland said Mendez Ortega told a series of lies from the start, and then unfurled a tragic life story that convinced the jury to impose a punishment of a $60 fine. “I was outraged,” Copeland said.[/quote]

[quote]Mendez Ortega reportedly felt bad about the theft, admitted to her boss that she had the rings and turned them over to him. The police were contacted and Mendez Ortega confessed to them as well, saying she returned the rings after learning they were valuable. The police had her write an apology letter to Copeland, in Spanish, which said in part, “Sorry for grabbing the rings. I don’t know what happened. I want you to forgive me.”

Copeland said she has never seen that letter, and that Mendez Ortega has never apologized to her in person. “Never saw it,” Copeland said. “Never heard about it until the trial, during sentencing.”[/quote]

[quote]Lisa Copeland said, I looked at my husband and said, ‘I’ve heard enough of this.'” She noted that after Mendez Ortega took the rings, “she lied to the cops, she lied to her employers. She didn’t turn in the rings, she made somebody else do it. She confessed, but claimed that the rings were in the bathroom. And then she tried to blame her boss.”[/quote]

Also this jury is ridiculous

[quote]The jury did not hear from Mendez Ortega during the case in chief, but they were already sympathetic to her. “We didn’t feel she should have been tried and convicted,” said Memmott, the foreman. “We tried every way we could to find some way of not convicting her. But the legal standard was very clear.”[/quote]

[quote]Memmott said he feels good about what he and his fellow jurors did.

“They weren’t out anything. They got back their property. They got justice," he said, referring to the victims.[/quote]

[AlbertWesker]

I never knew anchor babies could double as a shield against grand larceny. :hammered: