The Injustice of Oklahoma Sentencing

Last week I wrote a blog about the injustice of letting a man who actually violently killed a person live, while executing the man who was alleged to have only been an accomplice.

This week, Oklahoma’s screwed up sense of justice is in the news again. Tondolo Hall was convicted of “enabling child abuse” and received 30 years. The actual abuser? He only served 2. What’s more, according to this Daily Oklahoman article, Ms. Hall indicated in her commutation (sentence reduction) application that she was herself the victim of the man that abused her child. She indicates that she he “regularly choked her, blackened her eyes, threw objects at her and verbally assaulted her in front of her children.”

What does it say about prosecutors, juries and judges that they would ever believe that the disparity in sentences for the actual abuser and the person charged with enabling said abuse would be so much?

What does it say about a pardon and parole board that is stacked with conservative appointees from the Governor, that cannot see the manifest injustice of such a thing.

I don’t know about you, but the fact that an abuser of children is walking the streets after two years, while this abused woman is looking at decades more in prison sickens me to the core.