By Paul Shepard
No one felt good reading the story of the Ohio dad who left two small kids in a hot garbage dumpster for hours after fussing with the children's mother, Alisha Whitehead.
But the sentence of 17 years in prison that a Montgomery County Common Pleas Court handed down to Tommie Johnson Jr. of Dayton has me wondering if justice was truly served in this sad case of child neglect.
I can understand the arguments of some who say that only the grace of God prevented this from being a story of how two young children DIED in a garbage dumpster. His act was, as a prosecutor described, "unforgivable."
And Johnson Jr., 39, a repeat offender, who pleaded no contest to two counts of attempted murder, kidnapping, domestic violence and evidence tampering charges in the case, has shown little evidence that he wouldn't do something stupid and dangerous again to land him behind prison bars in the near future.
But some part of me feels that Johnson Jr. didn't get the best defense the American legal system has to offer in this case.
Did his attorney really think it was in Johnson Jr.'s best interest to plead to two counts of attempted murder? Was he really trying to kill his 23-month-old daughter, Ashonti, and her 8-month-old brother, Tommie III?
That answer was ultimately for a court to decide, but by taking all the charges, Johnson Jr. took the process out of the hands of the court and threw himself on its mercy. And little, quite understandably, was shown.
Now please don't interpret any part of this as a defense for Tommie Johnson Jr. He did something so wrong and so neglectful, he deserves to lose his freedom for a long time. And he will.
But I just wonder if Johnson Jr. had not become a national poster boy for dangerous parenting and if he could have been provided more aggressive legal counsel, would he have ended up with 17 years.
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