Legal analyst breaks down Laura Owens' plea deal and sentence

All right, welcome back to the news at nine. A whole lot happening in court this week. Maricopa County courts becoming quite a sensation with social media all descending on the courtroom. This is the case of Laura Owens involving former reality TV star from the show The Bachelor, Clayton Eckhart. Now in court, we did have Benjamin Taylor weighing in about what exactly happened. He joins us with perspective. Benjamin, this whole case involving Laura Owens, her appearance, so much different than I think we expected. Certainly skeletal, gaunt-like, but the allegations made against her, which the prosecution did prove in court, that she used her medical condition to manipulate Clayton Eckhardt and even fake two pregnancies involving these twins but it all turned out to be a sham yes i mean it turned out to be a sham and that's why the judge sentenced her to 30 days in prison and almost like seven years of probation so that's the thing people a lot of people are saying but 30 days is that a lot of time and the victims were mad the victims were like she should have gotten more but people need to realize that seven years of probation that's a lot of probation so she does anything wrong she can go back to court and be facing almost 12 years in prison if she does anything wrong in the future. Do you think her physical condition at all weighed in with the 30 days? Because it does seem a little bit light in comparison to other cases and trials we have seen. And what do you think other factors were involved in that lesser sentence than I think a lot of us were expecting? Yeah, you saw her physical condition, and she looked like a skeleton in there. And unfortunately, you know, when you're a defendant, you get stressed out, and a lot of times it weighs on your mental health. and the judge mentioned mental health that was one of the main reasons why you have to think about this a woman to be able to do all this manipulation um fake a pregnancy um you know do all this you have to have some mental health issues especially doing this to two different men out there so i think that's what the judge had a little bit of sympathy for her only gave her 30 days of jail now i did want to ask about the original charges that she uh was indicted over It was, I believe, more than a dozen felonies, including identity theft involving other victims than Clayton Eckhart. But we just saw that 30-day result. Now, of course, she was under the terms of a plea agreement. Can you talk a little bit about what prosecutors going into this trying to get justice in this case? But as we heard from Eckhart this week, I mean, he was quite upset about it. How is it striking that balance where you're still trying to get justice at the end of the day? So the victims have input, but ultimately a plea deal is between the defense attorney and the prosecutor. So those are the ultimate people who weigh in on the plea agreement. And this is what happened. They had a plea agreement, and this plea agreement allowed her to be able to do 30 days in jail. A lot of times what the judge does and the prosecutor looks at is criminal history. Her lack of criminal history, I mean, what she did here was bad, but she didn't have that much criminal history she had a lot of mental health history and that's what the judge looks at the whole circumstances to decide whether or not this person does you know prison time or does you know a small amount of jail time yeah interesting nonetheless especially with the social media part of this where the case really was for a large part tried in social media we even had just for the registration for for media through the courts to attend i believe it It was more than 30 different independent journalists or influencers in court. So a lot of attention there. How does that affect the case where you're trying to just stick to the facts in court, not what's on social media? Yeah, but this is reality TV. I mean, the victim here is a former Bachelor star. So this is what makes this case so very interesting. So because of that, yes, defense attorneys, prosecutors have to weigh in and realize that people are watching. And if this were to go to trial, I mean, the jurors, you know, everybody's heard about this case. And the judges know about this. So as an attorney, you always be aware that, you know, the public is watching. And that's how you strategize a lot of things, too. Maybe that's why they didn't go to trial, because they know if you go to trial, these jurors have heard about this. And the jurors might have hammered her at trial. Trenton and I talked about the other kind of salacious case, the Mon Cherie restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale. I believe this was one that you broke. I covered it. And, you know, this couple was in trouble for having a physical encounter in that little display out front and also, I think, breaking in and stealing some items. But they got much harsher years behind bars. Yeah, it was, I believe, four and a half years for the female defendant in this case. The man, I believe it was almost six years in this case. But definitely years in prison compared to 30 days in jail. know i know it's apples to oranges but the uh i would think the emotional toil of of what the previous case went through and then the this case where it was two people a little too much in love right brian um and there there was some money stolen too but how the sentencing guidelines can you kind of go over that yes i mean a lot of times they look at you know any prior criminal history and the what they did i mean they destroyed a lot of property yeah and they destroyed property that was worth a lot of money so that's the reason why these people you know got a lot of you know higher sentence than you know other other cases plus this intimate relationship that they had on you know on this restaurant and it was filmed on video i'm sure a judge didn't really like that and those type of things can aggravate your sentence if you're doing bad acts even though you might not be charged necessarily for that intimate relationship they had the judges look at that and say hey this isn't wasn't you know good that you did this and we're gonna give you a higher sentence because of what you did plus you know showing yourself on national TV on cameras in front of everybody right are there two justice systems or are these each individual trials and we have to treat them as such separate from all the rest i mean there's different judges and that's the thing too i mean each judge has a different take on everything there's different prosecutors, different defense attorneys. So all that weighs into why a person might get a harsher sentence versus another person. Yeah, it gets tricky. Well, these ones certainly got caught with their pants down. Yeah, well, yeah, it was such a big deal this week when that sentence came down. The Bachelor star was not happy about it. And we're all thinking 30 days for what he believes probably ruined a good chunk of his life and um could be a little disproportionate it could be a little off balance there but we've seen that and you always just wonder we'll have a good attorney i bet yeah a great attorney helps you know and plus hopefully in front of a good judge if you're defendant to get a you know a sentence that's lighter versus another judge out there might hammer you so can you request a different judge if you don't you can i mean at the very beginning of the case you can always say hey you know what i don't want this judge to be funny yeah yeah there's different rules and motions you can put out there to you know change the judges but i mean that's rare but if you don't like your judge yes you can you can do that usually in state court fair enough good stuff gotta have a great attorney like that yeah that's a good rule number one that's good advice thanks judge yeah anytime brian thank you