LETTER: Is justice a game?

I read the Sunday letters to the editor, and the one where the lady praised the parole board for paroling Justine Winter and gave her reasoning for her feelings, I thought she expressed her position very well; however it did not bring out  sympathy in me for Ms. Winter.

I do agree with the parts about her being young and perhaps not mature, but there is no way the writer has first-hand knowledge of any raging hormones that caused her to deliberately crash her car and kill two  people plus an unborn child. How many other kids do what she did?

What she did was horrible, but in my mind it just got worse after her trial. Truth in sentencing just does not exist and the courts make it a mockery. As I remember Ms. Winter was given two 30-year sentences to be served concurrently with 15 years suspended in each. Sounds like a  pretty  fair sentence if you overlook that it really means one 15 year sentence, but hardly does anyone serve the whole time and you can be cut loose any time the parole board wants to let you go.

What would have been a real sentence is one that had been 15 years and a day, but with the game the lawyers and judges play, they can appear to be tough on crime and so many times leave a big loophole to let the criminal get off easy, the same way they play the plea bargain game. So few actually plead guilty to the actual crime they committed.

Now Ms. Winter has another chance for a good life, but it’s a shame she denied the same for her victims. —Glen Hook, Kalispell