Question

Is it ethical and fair to put a person like Wollard in prison for 20 years?

2. If you whad been the judge what sort of sentence would you have given Orville?

Orville Lee Wollard is serving a 20-year sentence for firing a warning shot inside his home to defend himself and his daughter from his daughter’s abusive boyfriend.

Orville Lee Wollard is serving a 20-year sentence for firing a warning shot inside his home to defend himself and his daughter from his daughter’s abusive boyfriend.



After several prior run-ins with his daughter’s live-in boyfriend, 53-year-old Orville Lee Wollard reached his breaking point. He came home one day to find his daughter Sarah on the family’s front porch with a black eye; the boyfriend, Austin O’Hara, was inside. Wollard grabbed his gun, pointed it at O’Hara, and told him to leave. Instead of complying, O’Hara punched a hole in the wall, smiled at Orville, and then began advancing toward him. “It was either shoot him or fire a warning shot, but I couldn’t let him have the gun,” Orville recounted.footstar.png He then fired a bullet into a nearby wall. No one was hurt and O’Hara left. No calls to police were made until several weeks later, when O’Hara called police to report that Orville had shot a gun at him. Orville was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a firearm.

Orville spent a year in county jail prior to his trial, then prosecutors offered him a deal: plead guilty to a felony and be sentenced to 5 years’ probation or let a jury decide the proper punishment. He chose the latter, pleading not guilty. At trial he was not permitted to bring up details about his prior altercations with O’Hara; he was only permitted to say the boy was “no longer welcome.” The jury ended up rejecting Orville’s self-defense claim and found him guilty. The judge—and even the officer who prepared Orville’s sentencing report—felt extenuating circumstances justified leniency (even the prosecutors felt probation was appropriate), but the case triggered Florida’s “10-20-Life” gun law and Orville was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Twenty years in prison for firing a warning shot.



On the day of his sentencing, Orville expressed shock:

I’m amazed. I’m stunned. I have spent my whole life pursuing education [and] helping the community. Then one day this person…assaults my daughter, he threatens me. I protect myself. No one injured in this whole thing and I’m going to prison and the drug dealer’s on the street. And again, with all respect to [the court], I would expect this from the former Soviet Union … not the United States.

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