Hey, there! Log in / Register

Jail time, restitution out of the Ether for T graffiti

A guy who spray-painted cars on the Red, Blue and Orange lines was sentenced to a year in jail and have to pay $10,000 in cleanup costs, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Jim Clay Harper of Wilmette, Illinois, who went by the nom de spray of ETHER, pleaded guilty to seven counts of vandalism in Dorchester District Court on Friday, the DA's office says, He was arrested for graffiti sprayed on trains starting in 2005, and was caught in part because of his collaboration with another tagger, Danielle Bremer of New York, who was sentenced to six months in jail for spray-painting "UTAH" around Boston.

Topics: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

She was charged with 34 counts; him with 7.

She gets six months in jail and restitution (couldn't find out how much); he gets a year and $10k in restitution.

Curious.

up
Voting closed 0

34 counts - the cops pile on whatever they can hoping some will stick, even though they often know that some are spurious and likely unfounded. The number of counts somebody is charged with has nothing to do with the number of crimes that they are actually convicted of.

It could also be how their lawyer handles their case and what they get a judge to agree to - if she has more money for restitution, then she may have been able to buy down the time. He may have been willing to agree to more time and less money.

up
Voting closed 0

the Boston Police found 34 locations where "UTAH" was spray-painted, and the Transit Police found only seven locations where "ETHER" was spray painted.

up
Voting closed 0

As I recall, a large number of the "Utah" counts were for magic marker tags, and the "Ether" counts were for the bigger spray paint tags -- the relevant statute is the same, but it'd be wrong to assess those two very different types of tags identically. Harper will be serving six months with the remaining six months suspended for a one-year probationary term; compare that with Bremner's five-year probation.

Sentencing is a lot more individualized than you might think -- the sentence handed down by a judge most times has as much to do with a defendant's history as it does the charged offenses.

up
Voting closed 0

I had the same paranoid thought when I read this post, Brett. I've long harbored an unproven theory that, whatever disadvantages and inequities women have suffered and continue to suffer in the workplace and in various other social and cultural situations, the one place where they actually get treated a little better than men is in the American criminal justice system. Perhaps you could take on the burden of researching this more thoroughly- I don't think I have it in me.
Anyway, far more serious would probably be the race- and class-based differentials in criminal justice outcomes- another thing I'd like to research if I ever had the time, money, and brainpower.

up
Voting closed 0

I think there is a word for this sort of speculation ... starts with a "p".

up
Voting closed 0

enis?

up
Voting closed 0

enile.

up
Voting closed 0

reposterous

up
Voting closed 0

I'm just laughing, because it took me a minute to realize that "DA gets jail time" does NOT mean that the DA is in prison, lol. For a minute there, I really thought someone had caught the DA spraypainting T cars...;-)

Carry on...;-)

up
Voting closed 0

Changed.

up
Voting closed 0