Ethan Couch's Affluenza Defense

Submission 42,114

Overview

Ethan Couch's Affluenza Defense refers to a legal argument put forth by the attorneys of Ethan Couch, a North Texas teenager who fatally injured four pedestrians while driving a pickup truck under the influence of alcohol, which placed the blame for the defendant's reckless actions on his wealthy upbringing and ultimately allowed him to escape a jail time sentence in January 2014.

Background

On December 10th, 2013, Judge Jean Boyd sentenced 15-year-old Ethan Couch to 10 years in probation for killing four people and injuring 11 others while driving his father’s Ford F-350 with a blood alcohol content of .24%, along with traces of Valium, a prescription-strength tranquilizer. Couch’s legal defense then hired psychologist G. Dick Miller, who testified that the boy was unable to understand the consequences of his behavior due to his wealthy upbringing, a condition which he referred to as "affluenza." According to WFAA News,^[1] the defense cited an incident in which Couch’s parents failed to discipline him after he was ticketed by police who found him with an unconscious and undressed 14-year-old girl in a parked pickup truck.

Notable Developments

Following the trial, Eric Boyles, who lost his wife and daughter in Couch's crash, criticized the verdict for being influenced by the Couch family's wealth.

"Had he not had money to have the defense there, to also have the experts testify, and also offer to pay for the treatment, I think the results would have been different."

On December 11th, CNN broadcast an interview with Boyles (shown below), which was subsequently submitted to the /r/videos^[2] subreddit where it received over 4,300 up votes and 1,500 comments in the first month.

On December 13th, 2013, The Daily Dot^[5] reported that 4chan users launched a raid against Couch following his probation sentence, sending pizzas to his house and calling his phone number repeatedly.

On December 16th, The Daily Mail^[4] reported that Couch's parents had been accused of more than 20 crimes and traffic violations. Fred Couch (shown below, left) had been cited for speeding, theft and assault, while Tonya Couch (shown below, right) had paid a $500 fine for driving another motorist off the road.

On December 20th, Business Insider^[3] reported that Judge Jean Boyd had sentenced a black teenager to 10 years imprisonment after killing a man in March 2012. On February 5th, 2014, Judge Boyd delivered the terms for Couch's 10 year probation and rejected the prosecutions request to give Couch jail time on two intoxication assault counts.^[7] According to NBC,^[8] Boyd ordered that Couch be sent "to a rehabilitation facility paid for by his parents, but didn't require a minimum amount of time to be spent there."

#OpJustice

On February 6th, 2014 a 4chan thread was created for OpJustice (Operation Justice), an operation which urged fellow users to sign a Change.org^[6] petition to remove Judge Boyd from the bench, discredit psychologist G. Dick Miller and disseminate an image macro of Boyd across social media platforms (shown below, right). On February 7th, The Daily Dot^[9] published an article about the new operation, noting that the petition had received over 25,000 signatures.

Fugitive Status and Capture

In early December 2015, a video that allegedly shows Ethan Couch playing beer pong with friends surfaced on Twitter, which would violate his 10-year probation sentence that prompted a nationwide controversy two years ago (shown below). On December 3rd, Tarrant County Sheriff's Office issued a statement acknowledging the existence of the video via Twitter.^[10]

On December 11th, Tarrant County's police authorities revealed that Ethan Couch and his mother Tonya Couch have gone missing and the court has issued a directive to detain the missing individual, the juvenile equivalent of an arrest warrant.^[11] By December 18th, the investigation into the video and search of Couch and his mother had been joined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service, which offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Couch via the official Facebook page of Tarrant County Sheriff's Office^[12] (shown below).

On December 21st, the authorities followed up with another Facebook status update^[13] officially declaring Couch's mother, Tonya, as a missing person and subject of interest in the investigation, along with photographs and detailed description of a Ford F-150 pickup truck that may have been used as their getaway vehicle (shown below).

The missing vehicle is a black 2011 Ford F-150 pick-up truck with special Harley Davidson edition badging with 23 inch chrome wheels displaying TEXAS License Plate BC-50945. The picture below is an actual photograph of the vehicle. Tonya Couch's vehicle has crease-like damage to the passenger side real panel. The second photo shows a similar make and model truck with 23 inch wheels. Anyone with information on the location of the truck or the whereabouts of Ethan Anthony Couch or Tonya Lynette Pope Couch please call 1-800-336-0102 for US Marshals or 817-884-1213.

As the news of the authorities' manhunt began circulating online^[14], the authorities told various news outlets that they have already started looking into "hundreds of tips" that they had received regarding the potential whereabouts of the teenager and his mother from across the United States and abroad. Also on December 21st, the term "affluenza" was highlighted on Google Trends as the third most searched keyword of the day with more than 100,000 queries registered in the United States.

On December 28th, Couch and his mother were spotted and arrested by the local authorities in the beach resort town of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, then transported to immigration offices near the border for deportation to the United States. On December 30th, Tonya Couch, Ethan's mother, was promptly deported from Mexico and arrested by the U.S. authorities upon her arrival at Los Angeles International Airport for hindering the apprehension of a felon, while Couch himself managed to delay his deportation by one month through a court appeal in Mexico.

Sentencing

On January 28th, 2016, Couch was flown back to Texas and taken into state custody for a court hearing on his probation violation. On April 13th, after his juvenile probation case was transferred to the adult court system, the judge sentenced Couch to serve four consecutive terms of 180 days (or roughly two years) in prison as punishment for his original drunk driving case.

Release

On April 2nd, 2018, Couch was released from prison after serving nearly two years. The release came five days after his mother was arrested when her bond was revoked for failing a urine analysis drug test. While walking to a car after his release, Couch was followed by reporters who asked if he had "remorse" or if he wanted to say anything about "his victims," but Couch remained silent (shown below).