Brown admitted walking up to a teller with one of his hands under his jacket and telling her it was a "stickup." The teller handed the man three stacks of bills and he took a single $100 bill, told her he was homeless and left, police said.
Brown surrendered to police the next day, telling them his mother didn't raise him that way.
Police let him sober up and interviewed him two days later. Police said Brown told them he needed money to stay in a downtown detox center, had nowhere to stay and was hungry -- so he walked up the street and robbed the bank.
I pulled this story from http://www.ktbs.com/news/23350821/detail.html, a news channel in Shreveport, LA. The story is a little older, 2007, and I first read it via a friends post on tumblr and I thought it was extremely interesting. He posted this story alongside another story that featured the sentencing story of a former mortgage companies CEO.The ex-CEO was found guilty for his role in a $3 billion fraud scheme and was sentenced to 3 years and 4 months in prison.
I'm not sure I want to compare the cases, but I do think the sentencing for Roy Brown's 2007 bank "robbery" is a little extreme. Is 15 years in prison a reasonable sentence for a man who admitted to stealing out of hunger and homelessness? Even after he turned himself in a day later? Is there a positive side to this? I might sounds crazy, but some would argue that prison offers three square meals a day and rehab/detox facilities. What do you think?
