The Case for Indentured Servitude

This is what comes of encouraging racist hate among the mouthbreathers too stupid and incompetent to support themselves economically: they can't even pay the court judgments against them.

From the Courier:

Winning a million-dollar judgment against a former leader of a Kentucky-based Ku Klux Klan group might have been the easy part for Jordan Gruver, a Latino man who sued after he was beaten at a county fair in 2006. Collecting the money could prove to be impossible.

“It’s one thing to have a judgment,” Theresa Radwan, a professor of bankruptcy law at Stetson Law School in Gulfport, Fla., said Friday. “It’s another to have money in hand.”

A jury awarded Gruver $2.5 million in 2008 in a judgment against Ron Edwards, former grand wizard of the Imperial Klans of America in Dawson Springs, and another former Klan member. Edwards was responsible for $1.3 million. The other Klan member settled out of court with Gruver.

Kyle Burden is the attorney for Edwards. Burden said Gruver and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented him, won’t be able to collect anything because his client has no assets.

Richard Cohen, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s president and one of Gruver’s attorneys, said he plans to try anyway.

“Whatever we ultimately get from Mr. Edwards … will only be a small fraction of the verdict,” Cohen said. “I think his earning potential is low.”

SNIP

Property liens and wage garnishments are the usual ways someone can collect on a judgment, said Radwan, the law professor. Frequently, with larger judgments, the defendant will go bankrupt or is virtually “judgment-proof” because of a lack of assets, Radwan said.

Either way, collecting becomes much more difficult, she said.

“The challenge is, if there is nothing, how much money do you spend going after nothing?” Radwan said.

Before christianity popularized execution or maiming for even the smallest crimes, some cultures require malefactors to compensate their victims with goods of comparable value. Criminals without assets could pay compensation in the form of a period of months or years as servant to the victim.

It doesn't sound like Edwards would be much good for anything but manual labor, and even then would have to be supervised closely and constantly.

But a court has ordered him to pay, and stupidity-caused poverty should not get him off the hook.