“Affluenza” teen Ethan Couch will see 720 days behind bars — nearly two years — as a condition for his continued probation for a 2013 drunken-driving crash that killed four people and seriously injured two others.
A Texas judge in April had ordered the jail time but had given his legal team time to make an argument against the order.
On Tuesday the ruling was reaffirmed, according to Sam Jordan, communications officer for the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office.
A hearing scheduled for May 16 was also canceled, Jordan said.
In a statement, Colleen Sheehey-Church, the national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said, “After years of heartbreak, this is a small victory.”
The jail time is the latest twist in the complex and well-publicized sentence that Couch received in 2013: 10 years of probation for intoxication manslaughter, instead of prison, after his lawyers cited the now notorious “affluenza” defense, suggesting he was too rich and spoiled to understand the consequences of his actions.
As part of the 2013 sentence, Couch was always subject to possible jail time when his probation case was moved to adult court, which it did last month when he turned 19. The situation is further complicated by the fact that he’s already in jail, accused of violating probation, in part by traveling to Mexico last year.
