I've notice that the focus placed on certain crimes seems to be incongruent with the nature of the crime...at least in the case of celebrities.  I'm going to focus on four different instances that seem to exemplify the strangeness I find here.  Let's talk about Bonds, Plaxico, Vick, and Stallworth.

 

Bonds may have lied to congress during their inquery into steroid use in baseball.  What was the result of those inqueries?  A long document listing a bunch of players who likely took PEDs that isn't even public.  Bonds may have lied to save his own legacy and his own reputation.  He clearly didn't do it to protect anyone from prison or hide a crime since none of that was the result of the inquery.  Would anything have changed if he had told the truth?  Probably not.  Now he faces a possible 30 years in prison.  I'm not saying that lying to congress is right but when it comes to what he lied about, there was basically nothing on the line whether he lied or didn't lie except for his own reputation so is it fair to send him to prison for 30 years because of that?

 

Plaxico shot himself.  He's facing a minimum 3.5 years in prison for shooting himself.  I guess technically it was for having an illegally concealed handgun.  Is 3.5 years and millions of dollars in lost wages fair considering that he already missed a number of games and SHOT HIMSELF.  I'm sure he was probably reaching for the gun to shoot someone else but we can't really prove that and all we can prove is he was carrying around a gun with him.

 

Vick engaged in a dogfighting ring that injured a killed a number of dogs.  What he did was horrible, there is no doubt about it.  However, he was sentenced to 2 years in prison and probably lst 10s of millions of dollars in salary and fines.  Does his punishment fit the crime that he commited?  It's certainly far closer than anyone else I'll mention in this post.  The damage to his career and reputation were far worse than those 2 years ever could have been.  At least his crime was pretty horrendous compared with lying or shooting oneself his punishment wasn't so bad comparatively although I'd probably give him a years suspension and 6-12 months in prison instead.

 

Last but not least we have Stallworth.  He got drunk and hit someone with his car.  He is going to spend 30 DAYS in prison. WTF!  I understand that he didn't do it on purpose but seriously.  He killed someone and will only spend 30 days in prison!!!  How is 2 years for dogfighting even fair when 30 days for killing someone is?

 

I would argue that each of the crimes above was worse than the one above it but it looks like the punishments are going to go in the opposite direction.  Of course, the first two haven't been sentenced yet so they could get off much easier than what I listed but that's what the could be getting for those crimes.  Yeesh.  Something is definately wrong with our legal system imo.