The Spirit of Justice
courtesy of kimberlyfaye
Author Amanda Brooks noticed that one of the people petitioning GWB for a pardon is John Walker Lindh, the messed-up suburban white kid who went to Afghanistan to train with the Taliban, rather than Hot Topic like his other disaffected peers. He’s serving out his 20 year sentence with no chance of parole.
Brooks, as someone who writes about sex work, doesn’t really care about Lindh. She’s simply observing that the 20 years he’s serving are a lot shorter than the possible 55 year maximum sentance that Deborah Jean Palfrey was facing for running a business that connected willing participants and for which she paid all her taxes. Brooks says that credible sources indicated that Palfrey likely would have done 12-14 years before being paroled.
I hadn’t know before doing some research for this bit that Lindh was born in DC and spent his first ten years in Silver Spring. Personally I prefer sharing the city with folks like Palfrey over people like Lindh.