What Is Affluenza Defense
Affluenza is a compound word made up of the word’s affluence and influenza. It is a sign of a society where accumulating wealth is regarded as one of the pinnacles of success and has strong materialistic ideals. People who are reported to be affected by this syndrome generally discover that after achieving their financial goals in a single-minded manner, they still don’t feel satisfied. Due to their persistent desire for more than they now possess, they are perpetually unhappy.
According to proponents of the affluenza theory, people with the illness believe that money may make them happy. But they frequently discover that the quest for wealth robs them of fulfilment and leaves them feeling unfulfilled all the time. Since they live in a world of privilege that isolates them from the rest of the world and stops them from developing empathy for those from low-income backgrounds, they typically struggle to operate in ordinary society and discriminate between good and wrong.
Those with financial privilege are more prone to isolate themselves from the general population in a country where income disparity is expanding. The rich believe they have earned their way into a social class with superior intelligence and talent, which is a phenomenon that develops an entitlement mentality that can be self-perpetuating. They consequently assume that they are exempt from the social norms that govern everyone else. These people need legal support from well-qualified lawyers to keep them safe in their society.
The term affluenza has recently entered the legal vernacular. It was first applied to a Texas teenager who was charged with stealing alcohol, getting behind the wheel while intoxicated, and killing four people with his car. And how was the term Affluenza applied in a legal context?
Texas adolescent Ethan Couch was given a 10-year probationary period in December 2013 after he crashed his car while intoxicated, killing four pedestrians and wounding 11. Following the testimony of a psychologist named G. Dick Miller, an expert witness for Couch’s defence, who coined the term Affluenza to describe what he believed to be a type of mental illness in which one grows up wealthy and is unable to understand that there are consequences for actions that money cannot fix, the sentence was delivered.
In the Couch instance, the young person was observed by security cameras taking beer from a store and operating his father’s Ford F-350 with seven passengers while his blood alcohol level was 0.24 (three times the legal limit) and the zone’s posted speed limit was 40 miles per hour. Three hours after the collision that claimed the lives of four people and injured 11, his blood-alcohol level was found, leading some to think that it may have been considerably higher during the tragedy. Additionally, it was discovered that he had Valium residues in his body.
The couch was consequently charged with two counts of drunken assault and four counts of intoxication manslaughter. The teenager was a victim of Affluenza, according to psychologist G. Dick Miller, who testified during the trial. He was unable to connect his bad behaviour with consequences since his parents had taught him that money buys privileges. This was essentially a form of the insanity defence when it is argued that a person shouldn’t receive a prison sentence because they were unable to discern right from wrong or the effects of their conduct. Evidently, the defence was successful because Couch received 10 years of probation instead of a prison term for the intoxication manslaughter counts, despite having killed four people while intoxicated.
The couch was obliged to go to rehab as part of his punishment. According to some news sources, the family’s annual fee will be USD 450,000.00 for the child to attend the rehab centre close to Newport Beach, California.
The Affluenza defence is criticized for essentially absolving the wealthy of responsibility for their wrongdoings and holding them to a different standard than the rest of society. Even though the insanity defence has a solid foundation, the argument does seem to open the door for some absolutely ridiculous outcomes. Because of this, it appears doubtful that this defence will be used as extensively as the infamous Twinkie Defense, which saw a defendant attempting to argue that their insanity was caused by a bad diet that mostly consisted of Twinkie snack cakes. As a result, it is unlikely that you will be able to use the Affluenza defence if you have been accused of a crime.