Question: Jean Hudson Boyd is known for her controversial sentencing of Ethan Couch. What was his sentence?

Passages:
Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that filled in an important gap in the federal criminal law of sentencing.  The federal criminal code does not contain a definition of many crimes, including burglary, the crime at issue in this case.  Yet sentencing enhancements applicable to federal crimes allow for the enhancement of a defendant's sentence if he has been convicted of prior felonies.  The Court addressed in this case how "burglary" should be defined for purposes of such sentencing enhancements when the federal criminal code contained no definition of "burglary."  The approach the Court adopted in this case has guided the lower federal courts in interpreting other provisions of the criminal code that also refer to generic crimes not otherwise defined in federal law. Fact bargaining is a type of plea bargaining that occurs when prosecutors and defendants bargain over what version of events should be stipulated to by the parties and presented to the court as what happened.  Some statutes or sentencing guidelines specify that certain increases or decreases in the sentencing range must occur if certain facts are proven.  For example, a drug offense may carry a mandatory minimum sentence if the offender had a prior drug felony, possessed a certain amount of drugs or played a supervisory role in a drug conspiracy.  The prosecutor may agree to stipulate that there was no such prior drug felony, that the offense less than the threshold amount of drugs, or that the offender played no such supervisory role in exchange for a guilty plea.  Fact bargaining can also involve the defendant stipulating to certain facts in exchange for certain concessions so the prosecutor does not need to prove those facts.  Nancy King has argued that fact bargaining defeats the intention of the sentencing guidelines to have judges find facts.  Judges rarely overturn stipulations reached by fact bargaining. Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685 (2002), was a Supreme Court of the United States case that upheld a death sentence despite the defendant's argument that he should not be sentenced to death because he was suffering from drug-induced psychosis when he committed the crimes.  Cone also argued that he was denied effective assistance of counsel because his attorney failed to present sufficient mitigating evidence during the sentencing phase of his trial and that his attorney inappropriately waived his final argument during the sentencing phase.  In an 8–1 opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the United States Supreme Court denied Cone's petition for a writ of habeas corpus.  The Court held that the actions taken by Cone's attorney during the sentencing phase were "tactical decisions" and that the state courts that denied Cone's appeals did not unreasonably apply clearly established law.  Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion in which he argued that Cone was denied effective assistance of counsel because his attorney failed to "subject the prosecution's case to meaningful adversarial testing." Affluenza, a portmanteau of "affluence" and "influenza", is a term used by critics of consumerism.  It is thought to have been first used in 1954 but it gained legs as a concept with a 1997 PBS documentary of the same name and the subsequent book, "" (2001, revised in 2005, 2014).  These works define affluenza as "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more".  The term "affluenza" has also been used to refer to an inability to understand the consequences of one's actions because of financial privilege, notably in the case of Ethan Couch. Mandatory sentencing requires that offenders serve a predefined term for certain crimes, commonly serious and violent offenses.  Judges are bound by law; these sentences are produced through the legislature, not the judicial system.  They are instituted to expedite the sentencing process and limit the possibility of irregularity of outcomes due to judicial discretion.  Mandatory sentences are typically given to people convicted of certain serious and/or violent crimes, and require a prison sentence.  Mandatory sentencing laws vary across nations; they are more prevalent in common law jurisdictions because civil law jurisdictions usually prescribe minimum and maximum sentences for every type of crime in explicit laws. In United States law, a split sentence is a sentence which the defendant serves up to half of his term of imprisonment outside of prison.  Martha Stewart received a split sentence.  The Bureau of Prisons general counsel has opined that when an offender has received a sentence of imprisonment, the Bureau of Prisons does not have general authority, either upon the recommendation of the sentencing judge or otherwise, to place such an offender in community confinement at the outset of his sentence or to transfer him from prison to community confinement at any time BOP chooses during the course of his sentence.  A split sentence is only available to defendants who fall into Zone C of the Federal Sentencing Table. Jean Hudson Boyd is a retired judge in the United States of America who served as the Presiding Judge of Texas' 323rd District Court.  The 323rd District Court serves Tarrant County, Texas, as its juvenile court.  Boyd, a Republican, assumed office in 1995, but is known for her controversial 2013 probation sentencing of Ethan Couch, a 16-year-old who killed four people and injured 11 while driving drunk. Couch was indicted on four counts of intoxication manslaughter for recklessly driving under the influence.  In December 2013, Judge Jean Hudson Boyd sentenced Couch to ten years of probation and subsequently ordered him to therapy at a long-term in-patient facility, after his attorneys argued that the teen had affluenza and needed rehabilitation instead of prison.  Couch's sentence, believed by many to be incredibly lenient, set off what "The New York Times" called "an emotional, angry debate that has stretched far beyond the North Texas suburbs". In Veldman v Director of Public Prosecutions, Witwatersrand Local Division, an important case in South African criminal law, the court held that the principle of legality is central to the rule of law under the Constitution.  That case concerned the question of whether, where the sentencing jurisdiction of a court had been increased after an accused had pleaded, the accused could be sentenced in terms of the increased jurisdiction.  The court held it could not, observing that, once an accused has pleaded, the constitutionally-enshrined principle of legality requires that the sentencing jurisdiction of a court could not be varied to the detriment of the accused, even where it was clear that the increased sentence was a permissible sentence for the charge involved.  The court held that "to retrospectively apply a new law, such as s 92(1) (a), during the course of the trial, and thereby to expose an accused person to a more severe sentence, undermines the rule of law and violates an accused person's right to a fair trial under s 35(3) of the Constitution." James Pickles (18 March 1925 – 18 December 2010) was an English barrister and circuit judge and who later became a tabloid newspaper columnist.  He became known for his controversial sentencing decisions and press statements.  His obituaries variously described him as forthright, colourful, and outspoken.

Supporting sentences:
Jean Hudson Boyd is a retired judge in the United States of America who served as the Presiding Judge of Texas' 323rd District Court.  Boyd, a Republican, assumed office in 1995, but is known for her controversial 2013 probation sentencing of Ethan Couch, a 16-year-old who killed four people and injured 11 while driving drunk.  In December 2013, Judge Jean Hudson Boyd sentenced Couch to ten years of probation and subsequently ordered him to therapy at a long-term in-patient facility, after his attorneys argued that the teen had affluenza and needed rehabilitation instead of prison.