Owen Labrie received a light one-year jail sentence after sexually assaulting an underage girl at his New England prep school. While his victim was subjected to scorn and disbelief from peers and the media, Labrie was coddled every step of the way, turning down a plea deal that would have seen him out in weeks and being mythologized in a pretentious Vanity Fair profile. But now he’s going to serve his sentence early, because he just can’t follow the rules while he appeals his verdict.
A judge in Merrimack County Superior Court said Owen Labrie would begin his one-year jail sentence immediately.
“You are unlikely to abide by any conditions,” Judge Larry Smukler said. “I don’t relax conditions because you can’t comply with them.”…
Smukler, in sentencing him in October and permitting him to remain free on bail pending appeal, told Labrie he would be “exceedingly foolish” to violate his bail conditions.
Labrie’s light sentence hinged, as Vice put it, on the fact his underage victim didn’t “clearly express her lack of consent.” Jurors failed to convict him of felony rape, instead applying a 90s-era computer grooming law in what was described as a “bizarre” verdict.
Those sympathetic to Labrie point to the felony computer charge, arguing it was never meant to be applied to texting teenagers. Had Labrie reached out to the girl via phone, he would have been spared a lifetime on the sexual offender registry. Then again, these were no ordinary messages: Labrie and his peers shared email templates and strategies for scoring with younger girls; Labrie even had a list of potential targets, with the girl at the top, in capital letters.