Victim Sickened as Jury Helps out Thieving Illegal
After what could conceivably be the most naive jury in American history reluctantly convicted an illegal immigrant of theft earlier this month, its members reportedly teamed up to pay off the criminal alien’s fine.
“The general sentiment was, she was a victim, too,” the jury foreman, Jeffery Memmott, remarked afterward to The Washington Post. “Two of the women (jurors) were crying because of how bad they felt. One lady pulled out a $20 bill, and just about everybody chipped in.”
The jury wound up giving convicted thief Sandra Mendez Ortega the money she needed to pay off her $60 fine because they “felt bad for the young woman, pregnant with her second child, and agreed that she had made a dumb, youthful mistake.”
That “youthful mistake” entailed Ortega, 19, swiping at least $5,000 worth of jewelry from her employer, Lisa Copeland, a Virginia woman who had hired Ortega as a maid.
According to the Post, the two-day trial took place in July, but the verdict became official at a sentencing hearing Friday when a judge announced the conviction and imposed the recommended fine.
Copeland was rightly livid.
“I just pray that they’re never in my shoes,” she told the Post. “If she had accepted accountability, I would be OK with all of this. The fact that she won’t accept accountability makes it wrong.”
But instead Ortega lied from the beginning until the end, apparently portraying herself as a victimized single mother and bamboozling the jury into reluctantly convicting her and then hitting her with a pitiful sentence far short of the 20 years in prison and fines of up to $2,500 she had originally faced.
The actual crime reportedly occurred in September of 2016, when Copeland discovered that her engagement and wedding rings were missing. The rings were worth at least $5,000, according to the Post, but given their heirloom and family history, were probably priceless to their owner.
Following a brief investigation by the Fairfax City police, Ortega fessed up and subsequently spent eight days in jail before being released on a $1,000 bond.
According to the Post, Ortega apologized for the theft in writing, in Spanish, but Copeland never got the letter, and said she still never got an apology in person.
“Never saw it,” Copeland said. “Never heard about it until the trial, during sentencing.”
During the trial, the jury was not informed of either Ortega’s time in jail or the fact she was an illegal immigrant.
Copeland said the jury should have heard that: “I think it’s relevant to the case,” she said.
Her husband, Jeff, was far more blunt.
“It really irritates me that she came here and committed a felony,” he told the Post. “People are coming here because there is opportunity here. But when they come here and commit crimes, that’s where you’ve got to draw the line.”
Exactly. Of course, the jury continues to view the situation differently.
“We didn’t feel she should have been tried and convicted,” said Memmott, the foreman. “We tried every way we could to find some way of not convicting her. But the legal standard was very clear.”
Regardless of whether he’s still unaware of Ortega’s status as an illegal remains unclear, the stupidity of that statement is obvious.
“The fact that she confessed and they didn’t want to convict her … I don’t get this,” said Copeland. “That’s basically saying it’s OK to steal.”
Exactly. It makes zero sense to rational adults, but for a state whose citizens continue to vote against their interests by electing moronic Democrats into office, perhaps it does.
H/T Fox News
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