In Judge Jean Boyd’s courtroom, it appears that teen killers are better off if they’re rich and white than if they’re poor and black. Excerpt:

But News 8 discovered the same judge sent a 14-year-old black boy to prison in March 2012 for killing just one person with a powerful punch to the ground.

That teenage suspect’s name was never made public, since he was prosecuted as a juvenile.

“Just after 10 p.m. on October 6, [2011,] the teen was riding in a Cadillac with two friends when he suddenly jumped out of the vehicle in the 1700 block of Vaughn Avenue and punched [Mark] Gregory, who was 5-foot-1 and weighed 106 pounds,” the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. “Gregory’s head struck the pavement and he died two days later.”

The 14-year-old boy admitted to the crime, and never expressed remorse for the murder, according to prosecutors.

Still, Gregory’s mother, Anita Lauterbach, said she remembers the judge being more into rehabilitation rather than race.

“She wanted to send him to one of these special places in Arizona. But no one would take him,” Lauterbach said. “We were horrified. We just couldn’t believe it. The district attorney and I were just sitting on pins and needles. But when nobody would take him, [it was] a sigh of relief.”

Lauterbach said she is still disgusted at her experience with the judge.”She’s too easy on them,” Lauterbach added. “I don’t think she needs to be sitting on that bench.”

It may be the case that Judge Boyd is simply a bleeding heart, and the wealth of Ethan Couch, who killed four people with his drunken driving, only meant that he was in a better position to get rehab than the black knockout game killer. It’s certainly possible that race and class play into this story, but not in the obvious way. That is, Boyd may not be consciously going easier on the rich white kid, but the rich white kid’s having wealthy parents who could pay for pricey rehab made it easier for the judge to follow her bleeding-heart instincts than in the black kid’s case. If the victim’s mother in the black kid case is right, Judge Boyd would have sent her son’s killer off to Club Med rehab too, if she could have.

Still, it looks terrible. The rich white boy kills four and will never serve a day in prison. The poor black kid kills one, and gets prison. Same judge.