Why John Legend supports Felicity Huffman’s ridiculous 14-day sentence in college cheating scandal

Sep 16, 2019

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People have been upset about the pathetically small amount of jail time Felicity Huffman received compared to a homeless Black woman who was handed a five-year sentence just for enrolling her child in a school outside her district.

—Chrissy Teigen clowns Trump for attacking her and husband John Legend on Twitter—

But singer John Legend took to social media to urge people to resist being angry over the disparity of Huffman being handed a 14-day privileged sentence, saying that the focus should be on prison reform and lessening the amount of time all non-violent offenders should receive, The NY Daily News reports.

“I get why everyone gets mad when rich person X gets a short sentence and poor person of color Y gets a long one,” Legend began. “The answer isn’t for X to get more; it’s for both of them to get less (or even none!!!) We should level down not up.”

Huffman was sentence last Friday for her role in a college admission scandal and paid to get her daughter’s test scores tweaked so she could gain favorable entrance into college.

But many critics are sharing the story of a Connecticut woman named Tanya McDowell, who sentenced to five years in 2012 on felony charges of committing and attempting to commit first-degree larceny in connection with enrolling her child in a school in the neighborhood of her babysitter. The woman was homeless at the time.

I get why everyone gets mad when rich person X gets a short sentence and poor person of color Y gets a long one. The answer isn’t for X to get more; it’s for both of them to get less (or even none!!!) We should level down not up.

— John Legend (@johnlegend) September 14, 2019

Americans have become desensitized to how much we lock people up. Prisons and jails are not the answer to every bad thing everyone does, but we’ve come to use them to address nearly every societal ill.

— John Legend (@johnlegend) September 14, 2019

It’s insane we locked a woman up for 5 years for sending her kid to the wrong school district. Literally everyone involved in that decision should be ashamed of themselves

— John Legend (@johnlegend) September 14, 2019

Legend also made mention of the disparity in sentencing involving Crystal Mason, a woman in Texas who was also sentenced to five years for voting when she didn’t know she was not eligible because was was previously convicted of tax fraud.

The McDowell case even caught the attention of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who retweeted a thread comparing Huffman and McDowell’s punishments.

“We have a criminal justice system which is racist, broken, and must be fundamentally reformed,” he tweeted.

—Homeless mom faces jail for enrolling son in school—

“It’s insane we locked a woman up for 5 years for sending her kid to the wrong school district,” Legend tweeted. “Literally everyone involved in that decision should be ashamed of themselves.”