Father of "seven or eight," Jesse Lee Herald of Edinburg, Virginia, has pled guilty to "child endangerment, hit and run driving and driving on a suspended license" stemming from a vehicle crash in December. Herald had rolled his car after hitting an embankment, and proceeded to flee the scene, taking his 3-year-old passenger with him. He returned to the child's residence, dropped the kid off, and fled on foot—a week later, he turned himself into the sheriff's office.
Herald (previously convicted for hit and run driving, unlawful wounding, possession of illegal drugs and obtaining money by false pretenses) was sentenced to 20 months in prison, three years supervised probation and two years unsupervised. Oh and a vasectomy. As part of his bargain, Herald must undergo a vasectomy within a year of his release from prison and prohibited from reversing the procedure for the duration of his probation.
Assistant commonwealth's attorney Ilona L. White explained why she put the unusual option on the table. Via NVDaily (h/t Uproxx):
White said her motivation in offering the vasectomy option to Herald stemmed from concerns raised at sentencing hearings in earlier cases about how many children have been traced to him from different women.
"It was primarily due to the fact he had seven or eight children, all by different women, and we felt it might be in the commonwealth's interest for that to be part of the plea agreement," White said of the vasectomy provision.
There are definitely people who fall into the category of 'Should, for the love of all that is holy, never procreate,' and Herald probably falls into that. But this is eugenics, right? Temporary negative eugenics?
Image via Getty.