Lady Justice is color blind.....She only sees green.

Shock time. The 120 day call back. When I was doing the state portion of my prison bit, you would see these guys, usually huddled off in a corner somewhere, or stuck on their bunk like they were glued to it. Professional drunks, with more driving under the influence cases than they could keep track of. Deadbeats who believed the measure of a man was how many babies they could sire and then neglect to support. Aspiring dope slingers who decided they no longer wanted to be Scarface the second they got pinched, and then rolled over on guys they grew up with in order to save their own ass. Grown men who were either dope fiends, drunks, or Chesters, fortunate enough to be born to parents with money who never cut the strings. These were the guys who almost always came to the joint for what amounts to a few minutes. Shock time, 120 days and a wake up. Almost always white, from at least upper middle class homes, and to a man, possessed with an attitude that they were somehow above it all. They always blamed their circumstance on someone, anyone but themselves. They kept that under wraps, but you could hear it in their whiny smug voices, and see it in their averted eyes.

So when people were reacting with outrage that a judge will let Curtis Mertensmeyer go free after he has finished his 120 day shock time, I wasn't surprised. On Feb. 13, Judge Torrence sentenced Mertensmeyer to five years in prison with a 120-day call back, meaning he could be released after four months with good behavior . The deal was sealed days, weeks, maybe months prior to the judge handing down that sentence. If the prosecutor in the case objected, he didn't do it very loudly. And if he allowed the family of the victim, Daniel Riemann, to believe that Mertensmeyer was going to do more than 120 days, then he was blowing smoke up their collective ass. I'm sure he voiced his objections, for appearance sake, but the prosecutor in the case knew he was selling those people down the river from the git go. Judges rarely go out of their way to leave that 120 day door open, unless they intend to set the guy free.

Here's the thing about shock time, it rarely works. The recidivism rates for shock time aren't any better than mainline, do your time, recidivism rates. I saw more than a few clowns leave after 120, only to return 6 months or a year down the road. The truth is that the judge isn't doing anyone a favor by doling out 120 shock time. Trust me, 4 months is about as shocking as a 9 volt battery on the tongue. It will leave a bad taste in your mouth for a minute, but 6 months after you are out, it's like it never happened. Most guys doing shock never make it out of the safe and secure diagnostic centers. They don't get to enjoy the whole prison experience. They probably won't get to see some poor pin cushion wheeled away to the infirmary with a Plexiglas knife protruding from his chest, soaked in blood and his own piss, a deer in headlights look, gripped with the fear of dying in prison, alone. They'll never have the pleasure of falling to sleep serenaded by the stylized sounds of crazy people screaming, 400 aspiring rap stars yelling, metal doors constantly slamming shut, and the hourly flashlight beam to the face. They probably wont experience the loss of a loved one, or a dissolution of marriage, or any of the countless gut checks that come with doing a stretch, the whole stretch. See, prison sucks, big time, like Liberace in a dick tree. And it's supposed to suck, that's the whole point. That's what motivates the small minority of people who actually stay out, to stay out. Giving someone 5 or 10 years but only making them do 4 months, it kind of takes the sting out of the sentence.

People are outraged, and rightfully so, but this type of collective bargaining happens on a daily basis in the American justice system. Spoiled little pricks like Mertensmeyer get the equivalent of a judicial rub and tug with a happy ending, while people with shallow pockets get served the equivalent of a shit sandwich on stale bread. When it comes to 120 shock, it's who you know, how much you can spend, or who you can trade off to the police. People want it to be a white/black thing, but it's not. It's a green thing, or a who you can rat on thing. It just so happens that it's mostly white guys with money, or a willingness to rat. I'm sure there are other factors. The judges often don't consider the drunks and deadbeats criminals, at least not on the level of some guy who does burglaries, or writes checks, or the brown kid who slings dope. Maybe it's a matter of who they can relate to.

Mertensmeyer committed a horrific crime, he was drunk behind the wheel, he killed a young man and he destroyed several lives in the process. Maybe the victim was drunk as well, that seems to be a motivating factor in the judges decision. The fact remains, if Mertensmeyer had not been drunk and behind the wheel, he never would have hit Daniel, knocking him 139 feet, and one of his legs an additional 200 further. It is outrageous to people that this smug little prick is walking away after 120 days. But their outrage should extend beyond this one single case, their outrage should be directed at how often it happens. Mertensmeyer isn't unique, the outcome of his case isn't either.