Grandma's House

I think the judges in Nebraska are getting tired of college kids having keg parties. One judge in particular decided to make an example of young Mike Herchenbach.

Mike Herchenbach was sure he would get a fine. He’d pay a couple hundred dollars, like his roommates, and go on with his life, even though he wasn’t at the party that got out of hand at his rental house. After all, his name was on the lease.

But what he didn’t expect, and hardly believed, was what Lancaster County Court Judge Gale Pokorny had in mind as his punishment for maintaining a disorderly house last Oct. 2.

Herchenbach remembered his attorney from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln reaching for a work-release form, which would get him out of jail so he could work while serving his sentence.

He didn’t need it. It’s only a weekend, he remembered saying.

But Pokorny didn’t say three days in jail. He said 30.

Now, I'm all for toughening our stance on binge drinking and drunk driving. But this was totally unfair. He wasn't at the party; he was at his parents' home. He should not have received a tougher sentence than the two idiots who threw the party. It should have been the other way around.