Felicity Huffman Short Prison: John Legend Defends Sentence For One Good Reason

John Legend thinks people are misunderstanding the point in Felicity Huffman’s short prison sentence in relation to the college admissions scandal. Instead of being angry that she got less time than expected, people should see that this is a perfect opportunity to talk about prison reform.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, the “All of Me” singer wrote that people complaining about Huffman’s 14-day prison sentence being too short are not seeing the larger picture. He said that he can understand where they are coming from, but giving Huffman’s more time is not really going to solve anything.

“I get why everyone gets mad when rich person X gets a short sentence and poor person of color Y gets a long one,” Legend began. “The answer isn’t for X to get more; it’s for both of them to get less (or even none!!!) We should level down not up.”

He talked about how a homeless Connecticut woman who was given five years of jail time for enrolling in a school district where he did not live in and for other unrelated drug charges. He cited this given it was the case that was repeatedly being compared to Huffman’s to highlight the injustice of the actress’ sentence. However, Legend said that the time Huffman received as punishment is not really the main issue.

“It’s insane we locked a woman up for 5 years for sending her kid to the wrong school district," Legend tweeted. "Literally everyone involved in that decision should be ashamed of themselves.”

The singer thinks the problem is that Americans have become too desensitized to the number of people being sent to prison. “No one in our nation will benefit from the 14 days an actress will serve for cheating in college admissions," Legend tweeted. "We don’t need to lock people up for any of this stuff,” he added.

It can be remembered that Huffman’s involvement in the college admission scandal was initially said to be punished by at least four months of jail. However, the recommendation was lowered to one month, which many did not like already. After Huffman explained her side of the study, the sentence was lowered further to two weeks, which prompted the backlash that Legend is targeting.