Jonny Dallo was sentenced today to one year in jail for killing Jodi Burnett through his reckless actions. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
A 19-year-old Jamul man was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail because he killed a mother of five in a high-speed crash last June.
He also was placed on probation for three years, and will lose his license for three years.
This kind of slap-of-the-wrist sentence is exactly what I was afraid of when we got news of Jonny’s sudden guilty plea. It smelled like a plea bargain had been struck (though none was made public), and this sentence certainly seems to confirm that. In the absence of any public information, we’re left to stew with our worst suspicions — that the high-powered legal team defending Jonny somehow raised enough doubt to scare the prosecutors into bargaining for a light sentence. Or even worse, that the prosecutors had somehow been bought. One commenter (on another post relating to this case) speculates that the Dallo family paid the Burnett family to get their support for a lighter sentence for Jonny — possible, I suppose, but again there is no public information to support that.
In the end, with what has been made public, here’s what we know: a hard-working mother and wife is dead from a horrible car wreck that happened only because of Jonny Dallo’s incredibly reckless driving. Dead.
And Jonny gets one year in jail.
Do you think that justice has been served here?
I do not.
