A lot of really interesting things have been happening on project lately. I will talk about a few of them in this blog post.
First and foremost was the dealings between my sponsor and his client, a man named Derrick. Derrick was with a group of people whose plan was to buy marijuana, and then rob the seller and get away. To scare the dealer, 2 of them (not Derrick) brought BB guns. The end result of all of this was all 4 of them being arrested. Derrick is a nice, very well presented 20 year old Caucasion male, who also happens to be a great soccer player. His involvement in the crime was in fact extremely minimal, all he did was stand there, however, he didn't stop the crime when he clearly should have. Before his sentincing, I sat in on a meeting between my sponsor and the judge, in which they discussed their opinions on the case and the ultimate sentencing that was going to occur afterward. The judges ultimate stance was that she did not want to do anything that would cause harm to the well being of Derrick. Now what that essentially means is she does not want to do anything that may cause him to lose his job, his car, his house, among other things. However, at the same time, she wanted and needed to instill it in Derrick's mind why he should never even consider committing a crime ever again. To do this, she sentenced him to 10 total days in jail, which he would serve on the weekends for 2 days. The end result of this sentincing was one that did not harm the well being and ability of Derrick to be productive in society, but still one that sends an important message about life choices.
The second dealing I have had in the past few weeks was with a man named Paul. Paul is..interesting, very interesting, to say the least. Basically, the story goes likes this. Paul works for a man named Ryan, and they truly hate each other. Paul thought that Ryan was stealing money from him. Paul, in his brilliance, decided to not inform the authorities or anyone for that matter, but rather, decided to take the matters into his own hands, by trying to (secretly) steal money out of the cash register. So what my sponsor is dealing with is defending Paul from stealing money from his boss. This case has been going on for around 2 years, by the way. My sponsor got Paul a great deal, he needed to come up with 2 thousand dollars, and the felony would be completely dropped. However, Paul, being really really stupid, did not come up with the money, and is now a fellon. What I took away from this was do not ever be like Paul.