Her Lucky Day

The notion of personal responsibility took another shot in the chops last week when Matthew F. Kennelly, a federal district judge in Chicago, ruled that Elizabeth Randolph ("Randy") Roach, 47, should not serve up to 18 months in prison for embezzling $241,061 from her former employer. Instead, the judge sentenced the defendant to five years' probation, six months of weekends confined to her home, six weeks of incarceration in a Salvation Army work-release center and a $30,000 fine. Lawyers on both sides of the case said it was the first time a shopaholic defense has triumphed in a U.S. courtroom.

Why such leniency? Defense psychiatrists testified that Roach stole the money because she is addicted to buying stuff, and an independent mental-health specialist agreed. Thus Kennelly decided that Roach suffers from a "diminished mental capacity," that her binge buying was an attempt to "self-medicate" her depression and that jail time would only thwart the therapy that has lately helped stem her compulsions.

That Roach, who repaid the money she pilfered, escaped prison seemed unfair to some, given that federal guidelines forbid such clemencies in crimes committed by people under the influence of alcohol and drugs. And how many denizens of our consumer culture can now claim in court that they stole because they couldn't help themselves? "Hundreds, if not thousands," prosecutor Joel Levin argued in court.

The details of Roach's white-collar crime spree--buying a $7,000 belt buckle, spending $30,000 on a London jaunt and missing her flight home in the process, jiggering her expense account and pawning her purchases in an attempt to hide her splurges--might and probably will provide fodder for a made-for-TV movie. And the ending will be, as demanded by the genre, upbeat. The employer Roach cheated paid her $150,000 a year. She now has a similar consulting job with another company and earns $175,000.