Jesse Helt, the homeless young man whom Miley Cyrus had accept her “Video of the Year” award during this summer’s VMAs and was subsequently found to be maybe not technically homeless and on the lam from Oregon police, has recieved six months in jail for probation violation.
Helt’s defense attorney asked for leniency due to the fact that he wants to turn his life around and help people, however the judge was not exactly sensitive to his plight — probably partially due to the fact that he showed up 45 minutes late to his last court appearance and that whole thing of brazenly appearing on national television while being sought by police. As such, the judge went with the prosecutor’s recommended six months (with credit for 57 days served).
Defense attorney Whitney Boise — hired by Cyrus — unsuccessfully asked Judge Campbell to give Helt one more chance to meet the terms of his probation, rather than send him to jail.
Boise said his client grew up in poverty and has never known stability and discipline. He acknowledged that Helt made a big mistake in not following through on the terms of his probation, but noted that he did not run afoul of the law while in Los Angeles.
What is that — the reverse of the affluenza defense? Would that be povfluenza? So what I gather from this is that if you come from either an extremely wealthy family or impoverished one, you can use it as an excuse for waving a middle finger to old man law. I guess that only works when you’re the rich one though, because not even Miley Cyrus’ big city lawyer could get him out of jail time.
