Why All The Talk About Vick And The Eagles?

I know you think I am crazy for even making that the title of this post.  But bear with me a minute.  I have enjoyed all the raging debate last night and today.  Why the Eagles?  Should he even be let back in?  Is this a second chance or wasn’t he really doing tons of things wrong for a long time?  And everything that I’ve heard has been interesting with good questions and good debates.  But there is one question that hasn’t seemed to get the same level of interest and that really bothers me.

What about the disparity between the sentence that Michael Vick received and the one that Donte Stallworth got? This to me is a much bigger issue.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I love dogs and I cried like a baby when my lab got hit by a truck on the highway and was killed.  What Vick did was wrong no doubt about it. But Donte Stallworth was over the legal limit for alcohol, he chose to get into a car and drive, and a person ended up dead.  And he only served something like 23 days?

A good friend of mine has a 25 year old son who is prison for an accident (also in Florida) involving alcohol and driving where a person ended up dead.  In fact it was a friend who was killed.  And he will end up serving probably 5 FULL YEARS?   Compare these three situations and I don’t get it.

I think the question that should debated all day long is why do some celebrities and athletes get light sentences? Why do we let some people off light and not others?  Not the fact that Vick is going to get $1.5 million in Philadelphia and should he?  Roger Goodell, I believe, is trying to do the right things in the NFL with football players who break the law and league rules.  And it looks like he is acting on his own intent regardless of what the courts do.

So why can’t our criminal justice systems seem to get this right.  Why aren’t more people bothered by the Stallworth vs Vick question?  Am I out here all by my self?