Irrational Sentencing

The impending sentencing for actress Felicity Huffman, who paid someone to correct the answers on her daughter's SAT test to ensure the young woman's admission to college, has drawn a lot of comment. Much of it is very dumb, and I suppose the main reason that my opinion will not add that much to the dumbness is that it will not be as widely read as the rest.

Huffman plead guilty and wants to be punished by a fine and significant community service. The prosecutor wants her to spend 30 days in jail, and we see the dumb rear its head very quickly. I am not under any illusion that house arrest within her mansion is any kind of punishment for Ms. Huffman unless we are talking ridiculous amounts of time. The prosecution's recommendation to the judge takes snarky note of the unremarkable fact that a rich person lives in a nice home in making the case for some kind of incarceration. But let's not pretend that 30 days in jail will amount to anything other than a pinion in the Panama for the prosecution. The sentence is about the same theatrics behind the dawn raid on Huffman's home, in which FBI agents felt it best to arrest a test cheater over the sights of drawn weapons.

Huffman will be no more or less employable because of such a sentence -- Hollywood has already sentenced her to being a non-Meryl Streep woman over 50, so her roles will start to shrink soon. It will be of no material benefit to the federal government or jail which houses her. SAT test proctors will not breathe a sigh of relief that they are protected from offers to to switch a few of those penciled ovals from wrong to right for a stack of cash. A jail sentence will not signal to those tempted to cheat that it's wrong -- they already know it's wrong just like Ms. Huffman did, but they, also like her, think they won't be caught. They still will. Federal prosecutors will parade Ms. Huffman's incarceration-ish stint in jail because it's a rich person behind bars, not because any element of society will be any safer or better off if Felicity Huffman gets a monthlong wardrobe change.

Ms. Huffman's letter to the judge makes a couple of telling points. No matter what happens to her in the judicial system, she has a life sentence of her daughter knowing her mother didn't think she could get into college on her own. Sure, she's an actress and knows how to play a role, but it's tough to believe that's all part of a script. She makes a good argument that the overall balance of right and wrong is probably better served by her paying a significant fine and finding community service work to help undo some of what she's done -- but she doesn't seem to be aware that she's hardly the best one to make that argument stick.

Ms. Huffman's former Desperate Housewives castmate Eva Longoria wrote a letter in support of her friend's request for leniency which, in true celebrity fashion, made good points about Ms. Huffman's character while also giving herself a starring role and taking digs at other former co-stars, who aren't named. Actor William Macy, Ms. Huffman's husband, unsurprisingly argues that his wife should not be sentenced to jail and mentions in support how she acted partly out of the stresses and excesses of motherhood and maternal love.

As always, when the pyramid of stupid needs a capstone, one may turn to Joy Behar of The View, whose response to an item on Mr. Macy's letter was: “Who wrote that speech? It's, like, out of 'Desperate Housewives.' ” She thought it was funny, you see, because Ms. Huffman used to star in Desperate Housewives and it was kind of a soap opera and Mr. Macy's letter was a little overwrought and Ms. Behar's SAT answers could use a couple of "proctors" themselves.

Unlike some other wealthy families involved in this admissions scandal, no students were displaced by Ms. Huffman and Mr. Macy's daughter. She gained admission to a college which did not require the SAT, but that offer was rescinded when the scandal broke. Should some folk spend time behind bars for their roles in this? Sure...unless we can show that fining them would be more productive. Either way, we shouldn't pretend that a monthlong sentence for a wealthy actress will do anything for society as a whole, in spite of what the people who actually will benefit from it tell us.