I have an entire series entitles Hold them accountable, much of which is lost, or at least hidden, in a file containing whatever remains of this site prior to the reboot. However, before RedState closed itself to diarists, I had cross-posted nine of the Hold them accountable posts there, and they are still available. I have gone through the old RedState archives, and recovered those that I could, though the formatting may be poor.

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met the man! — Robert Stacy McCain, formerly a real professional journalist, and now the site owner of The Other McCain has become quite the stupid crime blogger of late, and now he has another one:

Florida Woman Was in a Big Hurry to Reach Her Destination: Prison

by Robert Stacy McCain | April 28, 2021

The vehicle that Jennifer Carvajal destroyed, photo by Florida Highway Patrol.

Jennifer Carvajal was behind the wheel of a Hyundai Elantra clocked on radar at 111 mph headed west on I-4 by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper. It was 1:30 a.m., and three passengers were in the car with Carvajal, who did not have a driver’s license, because she had violated her probation.What was she on probation for? DUI manslaughter in 2014.

Yeah, that’s right — apparently you can kill somebody while driving drunk in Florida and you’re back on the streets in just a few years.

In 2016, Carvajal was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released in 2019. “According to Hillsborough Circuit Court Clerk records, she was then arrested in May [2020] for violating her probation with a drug-related charge and was sentenced to five more years probation.”

Did you get that? After killing somebody, then serving only three years in prison, she was arrested for drugs, a probation violation that could have sent her back to prison. But it’s Tampa, where all the judges are Democrats, so they just gave her more probation. Less than a year later, she was doing 111 mph on I-4 at 1:30 in the morning when the trooper caught her on radar. And when the trooper managed to catch up with her, Carvajal had a truly genius idea — right turn!

The result of Miss Carvajal’s right turn at 178½ KM/HR? She wasn’t driving on a banked NASCAR oval — where all of the turns are left turns anyway — but Interstate 4, so, as Mr McCain has the video, things did not go well. Miss Carvajal and twop of her passengers were seriously injured, and one was ejected and killed.

Mr McCain tends to write in a mocking and sarcastic vein when it comes to his stories on stupid criminals, and there’s more at his original, but, to me, this incident raises some obvious questions:

• How did Miss Carvajal get just five years for killing someone? Was this the result of some cockamamie plea bargain? Was the judge just too lenient? In Florida, DUI Manslaughter is a class 2 felony, which can result in a sentence of up to fifteen years. The minimum sentence is four years.^[1]Brian DeFreitas, 48, was sentenced to 12 years for the same offense.
• How did Miss Carvajal get probation so soon, not quite four years, into her five year sentence? When she was considered for release, did no one think to ask, is she going to get drunk behind the wheel and kill someone else?
• Who took the decision, and why, in May of 2020, to sentence Miss Carvajal to another five years of probation when she violated her existing probation rather than throwing her back in the clink?

Well, that’s the answer, of course: May of 2020. Our legal system was releasing everybody it could — and I’m surprised that Pennsylvania didn’t release Wesley Cook, the scumbag cop-killer who goes by the faux name of Mumia Abu-Jamal — due to the huge overreaction to COVID-19. In effect, the legal system in Tampa, Florida bet that it was wiser to protect Miss Carvajal from the virus than it was to protect other people from her drunken driving. The result of that bet? A 22-year-old man will never see 23, as he’s lying on the slab, stone-cold graveyard dead.

Jennifer Carvajal

As we have noted previously, some media organizations have become reluctant to post photos of criminals, for what I have come to assume are the ‘social justice’ reasons of not making it seem as though non-whites commit crimes. One of Mr McCain’s commenters, who styles himself Buffalobob, wrote:

ABC action news, “we choose not to show her mug shot because she is no longer a threat to the community. Will they show it when she is released again on probation?

Another news organization did choose to show Miss Carvajal’s photo, which Mr McCain found.

The sad story of Miss Carvajal, who has now sent two people to their eternal rewards, did not just happen. At several points, people who have sought public office and are responsible for law enforcement and trying to keep the public safe, took decisions which enabled Miss Carvajal’s deadly actions. Will the judge who sentenced Miss Carvajal to such a short sentence be held accountable? Will the probation and parole officials who decided to let her out early be held accountable? Will the prosecutors who decided, in May of 2020, not to send her back to prison for probation violations, be held accountable?

The sad, answer, of course, is that no, they won’t be held accountable. Her entire five year sentence, had it been served, would have expired before this crash, so the probation officials don’t bear any real responsibility here, but the judge, who sentenced her so leniently, and quite probably the prosecutors who arranged such a lenient sentence, do bear responsibility. The officials who decided to add another five more years probation, rather than send her to jail, bear responsibility. Everyone who played a part in Miss Carvajal not being sentenced to the maximum amount of prison time allowable under the law, and everyone who played a part in not keeping her locked up for as long as the law allowed, bear responsibility for the death of that 22-year-old man.

Until we start holding such officials accountable — which I suspect will never happen — we will continue to have stories along these lines, of how someone who could, and should, have still been in jail on a previous conviction, has murdered, mugged, raped or molested another innocent victim.