Atkins didn’t choose to cop a plea. Atkins didn’t plea bargain. And the court didn’t give him a sentence. “Cop a plea” and “plea bargain” both involve pleading guilty to a charge, which Atkins didn’t do. Neither was he prosecuted and found guilty on a charge. Not having been found guilty, he wasn’t (and couldn’t have been) sentenced. And the news here is that he’s not going be prosecuted (never mind convicted) as long as he meets the conditions (not sentence) ordered by the court. Instead, the charge will disappear, as if it had never been made in the first place.

So it was perfectly reasonable for Juli – and the many other publications who used the same words – to have written that he was cleared of the charge. Because that is, in fact, what happened.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Suffice it to say that your belief and insistence–for no discernible reason–that a judge ordering a person to perform 4 days of community service does not constitute a sentence is bizarre. Is it because you find it relatively trivial? If the judge instead ordered Atkins to spend two nights in the county jail, would you insist that that’s not a sentence?

In any event, the terminology is an irrelevant “issue” that you’re obsessing on to distract from what was the point of the thread: I stated that it’s misleading to write that Atkins “has been cleared”–suggesting that he was wrongly accused–when in actuality, he chose to cop a plea.

As the self-appointed protector of every person, institution and domestic animal that’s part of the Nashville “industry” against every outsider, it really galls you that I pointed that out. So you keep repeating that I’m stupid–even though I’ve made it quite clear that your digs and insults don’t bother me in the least.

However, I do want to thank you for the comedy afforded by reading a claim of expertise from someone too cowardly to put his or her name to a post. “Hey, I’m a lawyer, you should take my pseudonymous word for it!”

But I won’t, because you’ve never been mistaken about anything since Merv Griffin challenged Johnny Carson.

So you believe that when a judge orders you to show up somewhere for 4 days to clean rest areas or rake leaves or scrub trays or whatever–that you have not been sentenced.

And you believe that after the judge signs off on that sentence–um, Order,–the way it should be reported in the media is that you “were cleared of the charges against” you.

And you’re a journalist, not a cheerleader.

Me: “Uh, nope.”

luckyoldsun: “Are you disputing that Mr. Atkins was sentenced to do 30 hours of community service?”

Me: *facepalm*

Are you disputing that Mr. Atkins was sentenced to do 30 hours of community service? If so, why don’t you say it. And if not, then what, if anything, is the purpose behind your commenting here?

Uh, nope.

One doesn’t really need to be familiar with the niceties here, but on the other hand, if one is going to go out of one’s way to make crabby, caviling comments, it’s probably good to have some idea of what one is talking about.