The backlash was swift after the public found out a white woman and a Black woman in the same county received two different sentences for similar crimes.
Karla Hopkins, who is Black, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing $40,000 from the Maple Heights High School class of 2018, reported Cleveland.com. Hopkins was a school secretary when she was accused of stealing funds between July 2017 and June 2018. She was indicted on one count of third-degree felony theft in office in May 2020.
She pulled the money from various sources including school clubs, yearbook fees, senior dues and ID badges and book fines. After the school found out about the theft, she removed all the funds from her pension account, which prevented the school from using the money for restitution.
Hopkins’ defense attorney blamed her mistakes on mental illness and gambling addiction.
Debbie Bosworth, a white woman, was sentenced a day before Hopkins found out her fate, per the Hastings Tribune. Bosworth had stolen over $248,000 over 20 years. She worked as a clerk in the Chagrin Falls village utilities and building departments. She took the money that came from residents’ utility payments and building department accounts.
Bosworth plead no contest to 22 counts including third-degree felony theft in office, the same charge Hopkins received. She began paying the money back before she was charged and didn’t touch her pension money, which was taken to pay for her crimes.
A judge sentenced Bosworth to two years of probation. Both cases were handled by two justices on the bench of the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.
The severity of Hopkins’ sentence compared to Bosworth’s has become of a point of contention on and off social media.
“I think it reinforces the lack of trust in the justice system,” Danielle Sydnor, president of the Cleveland NAACP told The Hastings Tribune. “These types of things are the way the system was designed, and they will continue to happen if we don’t have large-scale reform.”
