Only 8 Years for Murder in NYC

I don't know how this qualifies as manslaughter. Lauren Pazienza pleads guilty to fatally pushing Broadway singing coach Barbara Maier Gustern to her death | Daily Mail Online

Pazienza, 27, attacked the 87-year-old vocal coach last March on a Chelsea sidewalk, forcefully shoving her to the ground.

She is expected to serve eight years for the killing - significantly less time behind bars than the 25-year sentence she risked receiving at trial. She will be formally sentenced on September 29.

You walk across a street, walk up to someone, call them names, and then attack them, and kill them. That seems like a bit of premeditation. Why? Because you were told to leave someplace you wanted to be. And you were high as a kite. Why not make an example of her? Why not try a case that it is clear you could win? Because Justice is not what they are after in the DAs office.

Alcohol was certainly involved. Drugs may also have been involved. And a person who never had to answer for any of their prior bad actions was involved.

Her former friends said that it came as 'no surprise' to see Pazienza accused of the disturbing crime.

'What angered me most was seeing that her lawyer said she's overcharged and is a good and moral person. She's not,' one said.

One of her childhood classmates said that her parents got her out of every bit of trouble she ever got in. That is not a good way to face life - thinking that the rules don't apply to you. But maybe she was right, because I don't think this qualifies as being held to account.

Is this justice? I'm guessing the relatives of the woman who was killed don't think so.

The DAs in Manhattan have a strange way of deciding what is worth prosecuting and what is not.