Last February, a former college student was sentenced to six years and four months in prison for fleeing after drunkenly plowing into a psychiatrist out walking his dog.
But this month, Heather Hulsey, 22, was released on probation by a Santa Barbara County judge who ordered her into a residential substance abuse program.
Her fortunes changed because of an unexpected pregnancy -- an event that, according to the victim's family and prosecutors, unfairly flung open the penitentiary gates for a prisoner who behaved badly even after her arrest.
Advocates for women in the penal system generally praise the goal of keeping an incarcerated mother and her child together. That was the logic expressed in court by Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Frank J. Ochoa.
"I've made the determination that I don't want your child to grow up without a mother," he told Hulsey on Sept. 15. "You've seen jail now, you've seen prison now. I'm presuming it's a place you do not want to go back to."
But critics of Ochoa's controversial decision see it as a "get out of jail free card" to women trying to have their sentences reduced.
"Justice has been blindsided by this complication in a case that seems pretty straightforward otherwise," said Lincoln Shlensky, whose father, Ronald Shlensky, 71, died in the 2006 hit-and-run. "If this judgment stands, will women be eligible for release merely on the basis of pregnancy?"
In court, the judge said he changed Hulsey's sentence to keep her and her then-unborn son together.
Hulsey's baby was due Sept. 21. It was unclear Friday whether the child had been born.
During his remarks, Ochoa said that Hulsey would spend the same length of time in "the same exact kind of facility" she would have been in if she had qualified for the Community Prison Mother Program run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
But even if the facilities were identical, reducing Hulsey's prison sentence to probation "sets a terrible precedent," said Santa Barbara County Deputy Dist. Atty. Arnis Tolks.
"I don't have evidence that she did this on purpose, but I wouldn't put it past her -- or other women in her position who hear about this," Tolks said.
Corrections officials had given contradictory signals to Ochoa and attorneys in the case as to whether Hulsey would be eligible for the Community Prison Mother Program, which places female prisoners and their children in highly supervised, homelike settings. On Friday, they said that during her stay at Valley State Prison for Women, she had been classified as too high a risk.
