The verdict in the Casey Anthony trial wasn't the only outcry-inducing ruling coming out of Florida courts this summer. The difference in Ryan LeVin's case is, he admitted to double homicide, and still didn't get any jail time.
In a ruling that shocked nearly everyone following the case, the scion of a wealthy Chicago-area family was sentenced to two years' house arrest -- in his family's beachfront condo -- after pleading guilty to hitting two British businessmen with his Porsche in Florida in 2009, killing them both.
His sentence came down from the maximum of 45 years in prison, in large part because he wrote the victims' families a check for an undisclosed amount to settle a related civil suit.
Cries of "checkbook justice" went up around the country, and the Chicago Sun-Times editorialized that "justice is blind, unless you've got money, in which case justice is a cash register."
But on Wednesday, LeVin was handed a small measure of prison time when the Illinois Prisoner Review Board sentenced him to just under eight months in his home state, as the Chicago Tribune reports.
His sentence, though, has nothing to do with vehicular homicide. Instead, he's going to prison for violating his parole.
When LeVin committed the double homicide in 2009, he was already on parole for a 2006 charge in the state of Illinois -- a vehicular hit-and-run, as a matter of fact, in which he struck a Chicago police officer before sparking a high-speed chase going the wrong way on the city's busy Kennedy Expressway.
By going to Florida without getting permission from his parole officer, LeVin violated the terms of his parole, the IPRB ruled. He will therefore serve out the rest of his sentence behind bars. That will keep him in prison until March 1, 2012.
Including the hit-and-run, LeVin had committed over 50 moving violations before the fatal accident in 2009. With two dead bodies to his name, his license has now been revoked.
Not to worry, though: Broward County, Florida prosecutors told the Tribune that his eight months in Illinois prison will count toward his two years' house arrest.