The Williams-Bolar case goes national

THANKS TO Kymberli Hagelberg's Fairlawn-Bath Patch home page for alerting us to a national movement in support of Kelley Williams-Bolar. (See my post below). Hagelberg reports that a social action site, Change.Org, has a web-based petition to get Williams-Bolar's sentence reduced. Another site, Daily Kos, says more than 1,000 signed the petition in eight hours. Among other things, Change.Org is seeking donations for Williams-Bolar's legal defense. .

The law was broken - but a felony? C'mon!

THE CASE involving the felony conviction of an Akron mother for falsifying records to place her two daughters in another school has morphed into a whodunnit. The original sentencing of Kelley Williams-Bolare by Common Pleas Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove was a harsh reversal of typical endings in such cases: a felony that threatened the mother' s ambition to become a teacher even though she was just a few credit hours away from a teaching degree. Legal sources tell me it was the first such case that carried a felony. There are many similar illegal transfers that are resolved with misdemeanor charges or none at all.

Well, the judge now says she was quite prepared to reduce the charge, but was thwarted by the county prosecutor, Sherri Bevan Walsh, who has no explanation to rebut the court's claim. So we have two elected officials in a deadlock while many of us continue to wonder whether anyone has a notion about how justice is served. ( That much hasn't dissuaded some broadcast and print voices from checking in indignantly with their idea of upholding the law. They insist the law was broken - case closed with deserved punishment. The law, after all, is the law. Blah. Blah. Blah. )

Funny, but I haven't heard anyone deny that the law was broken. That's hardly at issue. The real issue is did the punishment fit the crime - in this instance, a felony record despite the reduction of the jail term from five years to 10 days with community service thrown in?

Surely, there's a fairer way to run a railroad. .