A Tale of Two Thugs
But there was another case of domestic violence in the news yesterday, one that got obliterated by the Ray Rice episode. Mark Fuller is a judge in the federal district court in Alabama, and not an obscure one. It was Fuller who presided over the trial and conviction of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, which stank more than a little, and which made Fuller famous among federal district judges in the South. In August, Fuller was arrested for knocking his wife around an Atlanta hotel.
About a minute into the call, as the initial dispatcher patches an ambulance dispatcher into the call, the woman identified as Kelli Fuller, 41, can be heard saying ‘I hate you, I hate you.” A male voice responds: “I hate you too” followed by dull noises in the background. The woman’s voice can be heard loudly repeating: “Help me, please. Please help me. He’s beating on me.” The initial dispatcher tells the ambulance dispatcher: “She says that she’s in a domestic fight and I can hear him hitting her now.”
Fuller was busted that night, on a misdemeanor. And yesterday, he took a plea deal. Fuller will have to go to counseling once a week for 24 weeks and, if he manages to complete that terrifying emotional obstacle course, his arrest will be expunged completely. It will be like the whole thing never happened. In the meantime, of course, Fuller will go back to his day job, with full pay and benefits, because the only way Fuller can be fired is if Congress impeaches him.
There are two obvious reasons why the adjudications of these two cases seem so disproportionate.
1) In the Rice case, there was video.
2) Ray Rice is black and Mark Fuller is incredibly not.
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