By MARK ESPOSITO
Joe Rickey Hundley was having a bad day … a really bad day … when he boarded Delta flight 721 from Minneapolis to Atlanta. It seems his son had slipped into a diabetic coma the day before and he was headed to Atlanta to decide whether or not to remove his son from life support.
Seated next to Jessica Bennett and her 19-month-old son, the businessman was expecting an uneventful but sad flight. When the toddler began crying, Hundley told Bennett to “shut that nigger baby up.” When that little bit of child/mom psychology didn’t work, he reached over and slapped the child with an open hand. Other passengers and a flight attendant intervened to stop the battery, and Hundley appeared to be intoxicated.
Last October, Hundley pled guilty to simple assault in federal court and was sentenced today following a pre-trial report. The trial judge sentenced Hundley to eight months in federal prison — two months more than prosecutors recommended. The child was not seriously hurt in the crime but did suffer a scratch below his right eye
Hundley’s lawyer, Marcia Shein, called the sentence “disproportionate,” and added that her client “had paid a terrible price for his hurtful words but asks only that people understand that he was not doing well that night and spoke hurtful words he would have not otherwise have said.”
Hundley also lost his job as an executive at AGC Aerospace and Defense, Composites Group, over the crime.
Is eight months too much active prison time for what happened? Was the judge influenced by the racial epithet, and should that have resulted in more jail time? Should he have been when the crime was not a hate crime but simple assault?
It seems awfully harsh to me given the surrounding circumstances and the stress Hundley was under. Active jail time was in order, but 8 months seems over the top?
I wonder what the readers of the blog think?
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I’m thinking that a diminished capacity defense should have been used….. The judge is clearly out of line in the excessive sentence….. But since it’s a white male, slapping a black child… I think they were forced to do something extraordinary….. I am thinking the man should have had a better attorney…..
Isn’t it assault? Or is it battery or both? What is a typical sentence for hitting a child? I think it may have been a bit excessive, but so was this man’s response to an innocent child. I can sympathize with him a bit because of his circumstances, but to assault a child, no way.
I already hate this guy, but even to me, that seems excessive and disproportionate.
To me the age of the child is the significant aggravating factor (not the racial epithet) and I don’t have a problem with the judge sending a strong message that it isn’t okay to hit someone else’s kid (or your own, but that’s a different matter).
Great to see you here Mespo!
A simple assault results in up to six months’ imprisonment. If the victim is under age 16, the maximum imprisonment increases to one year. (18 U.S.C. § 113(a)(5).) He could have a year according to federal law. I guess if one conducts themselves like a plantation owner in a federal space, one does some time in 2013.
oops! could have received a year
When the story first appeared, I was appalled. The story I read did not cover the reason the man was travelling. Makes for one hell of a lousy story. A son’s possibly terminal illness, hitting a baby, losing his job, prison sentence… Jeez. I don’t even want to know if his son recovered..
Almost makes you think God and Satan have made another bet.
Too long in prison.
Craziness Slartibartfast…. That’s what this comes down to….
Seems fair to me.
I’m going to take race out of the equation. A stressed out adult hits a 19 month old crying baby. Babies cry for lots of different reasons but since the baby can’t talk clearly enough, we often don’t know why they are crying. Of course the adult can talk and so we know he hit the crying baby because he was stressed over having to face a difficult decision regarding the imminent death of his own child. I suppose that if the crying baby had been able to understand the man’s situation, he would have stopped adding to his stress by ceasing to cry. But that’s the problem with babies … they just don’t listen!
Eight months, shit. That man’s lucky he wasn’t sitting next to me.
If this were the sixties I would have the names of two nuns I could throw into this conversation of slapping youngsters. ….. Though I was not pure innocence by the time I was nine or eleven…
….. er .. or 59… 🙂 :o)
I somehow lost my MOJO of confidently making smiley faces on WP, the double icon is an attempt to recapture it.
8 months and perhaps he’ll be out in 3. Tough sentence considering all the circumstance, but if that had been my baby or grandchild, I probably would have wound up in jail. All of us have suffered through terrible times in our lives, but almost all of us have the self-control not to make it worse. The “slapping” is what gets me. The racial epithet just indicates what type of person he is and he isn’t a nice one. If all that was involved was the epithet then there is no crime other than extremely bad taste. One doesn’t slap someone else’s child period. I never used corporal punishment for my own children and I’d break the arm of anyone who would dare to.
There is a problem to be faced and it is one endemic to our criminal justice system. How do we deal with behavior influenced by stress or chemical ingestion, when that behavior results in another’s harm? I don’t think there is a one size fits all solution. At issue is how do we take the legal definition of justice and translate that into what people in common parlance view as justice?
I don’t know specifically about this case, but it seems the criminal justice system is overly relying on the prison system to punish people, rather than using the prison system to separate people who are a danger to society. This especially seems the case for minorities. Im sure there is some balance that has to be struck, but if the guy just made a stupid mistake I don’t like spending the money to overly punish him if he isn’t really a danger to society. Eight months seems like a long time, although I agree with Mike that the slapping is rather alarming.
“I don’t know specifically about this case, but it seems the criminal justice system is overly relying on the prison system to punish people, rather than using the prison system to separate people who are a danger to society.”
John530,
This is very true and in part it is because the prison industry needs clients.
I am not sure what to think about this case. As a parent under stress, I understand him overreacting; however, there is no way I can do enough mental gymnastics to excuse what he did. Of course, no one around him was likely to have known of the stress he was under, but he is an adult, and should have known enough to withdraw if he was that stressed. He should be glad I was not one of those who intervened. If he had gotten up and talked to a flight attendant about what was happening in his life, I am sure he could have been moved to another seat.