‘Affluenza’ teen tentatively ordered to serve 2 years in jail
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Jason Hanna, CNN Newswire
(CNN) — [Breaking news update, published at 10:30 p.m.]
A Texas judge ordered Wednesday that “affluenza” teen Ethan Couch spend 720 days in jail — nearly two years — as a condition for his continued probation for a 2013 fatal drunken-driving crash.
However, the judge said he’d give the defense two weeks to make an argument against the order.
“Nothing is set in stone, so I might reconsider,” the judge said in a court hearing in the case in Tarrant County, Texas.
[Original story, published at 10:02 p.m.]
Ethan Couch, a Texas teenager accused of fleeing to Mexico after using an “affluenza” defense to avoid prison in a fatal drunken-driving crash, will remain in jail for an undetermined number of days while a judge awaits recommendations from prosecutors and defense attorneys, the judge said during a court hearing Wednesday.
The judge eventually will determine how many further days Couch will have to serve in jail as a long-anticipated condition of his probation upon turning 19.