Racking Up Strip Club Tab On The Lam; Will Ethan And Tonya Couch Face the Music?
COOPER: The mother of the so-called affluenza case was in court in California today. Tonya Couch is sent to be extradited to Texas where she's been charged with hindering apprehension of a felon. She and her 18-year-old son Ethan were caught in Mexico last week. They fled to Mexico as you know while Ethan was on probation for killing four people in a drunk-driving accident. The case of course got national attention after Couch's defense argued he was too rich and spoiled to understand consequences. He was 16 years old at the time. His probation officer couldn't get ahead of him after -- or a hold of him after a video allegedly showed him at a party where people were drinking. He wasn't supposed to be around drugs and alcohol during probation. Now, ABC is reporting that while he was in Mexico, he racked up $1,000 bill in booze and alcohol at a strip club and couldn't pay the bill so his mother had to pay it for him. Joining me is Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of Dr. Drew and HLN, CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney, Mark O'Mara. Dr. Drew, what do you make of this? I mean, not only does this kid flee the country skipping out on probation but while the kid is out of the country, reported racks up $1,000 at a strip club and can't pay for it.</s>DREW PINKSY, HLN HOST, "DR. DREW": I make nothing of this. This kid's a drug addict who failed treatment and ran from the law and now he is engaging in the behaviors of his disease. I mean, you know, wherever he goes, he will continue to be him and he will continue to engage in addictive behaviors whether he goes to the other side of the globe. This is how this guy is going to behave and his mother is going to continue to enable it.</s>COOPER: And Mark, I don't really understand why he's still in Mexico. Why hasn't he been sent back to the U.S. to face whatever punishment he's going to face? I mean, the U.S. has an extradition treaty with Mexico.</s>MARK O'MARA, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: We do. But it's quite a formalistic affair that we have to go through. So once his defense team decided we're going to throw that roadblock up, that they were going to say we want a formal extradition hearing, then that process slows down a great deal. Now, it may be a tactical decision. I'm not certain it's the right move but they may have decided, we'll let him sit in Mexico until he gets close to his 19th birthday so by the time he comes back the juvenile court has no control over him. So there may be things working underneath the surface that we're not aware of yet.</s>COOPER: But does he just serve time until he's no longer a juvenile and then he's released?</s>O'MARA: The way the Texas law is, the juvenile court has control over him until his 19th birthday, which we know is going to happen in four months it would be less now. So they can't put him in juvenile jail any longer than his 19th birthday. It seems, however, the sentence was set up so that once he turns 19, the rest of his probation will be transferred to adult probation. So he may have whatever's left, four, five, six years of probation as an adult. His real exposure is going to be if, once he's transferred to adult court and adult probation, if he violates that probation, prison's on the table.</s>COOPER: Right. So, chances are, if he doesn't violate adult probation, he should be fine. He won't be going to an adult facility. He only would -- I mean he only has four more months to serve as a juvenile.</s>O'MARA: Well, but, to Dr. Drew's point, if he's an addict, if he has lived a life where he's had no constraints on him so far, he's going to have a real tough time with probation, particularly with a probation officer that's probably going to be looking at him like a hawk.</s>COOPER: Right. And Dr. Drew, I mean, you talked about the mom but how much responsibility does she have here?</s>PINSKY: Well, she's -- Listen, I don't want to create another victim here but the fact that she's enabling so profoundly, I deal with these sorts of circumstances all the time. Adam Lanza is a case of this where the mother is in such massive denial when she has a terribly sick child, the setting of addiction, the way addiction works is that the addicted child will play upon the mom's emotion in such a way that the mom will believe if she doesn't rescue the child, the child will die when in fact the reality is, if she continues to rescue, the child will in fact die. I'm going to make prediction, there's no way he's going to make it through his probation. No way. This guy needs long-term intensive treatment. Yeah, there's no way. This is a disaster, this poor kid. And the only thing that might save his life, frankly, is prison. In prison he might see -- gain some insight. But on the outside, this is going to be a disaster.</s>COOPER: Mark, you're also concerned that he and his mom basically (inaudible) the system could make judges not want to give lenient sentences to other people even when they may be warranted.</s>O'MARA: Well, here's the problem, you know, the affluenza event itself seems to be sort of at the far end extremes of some type of a proposed defense. My concern is he got such a deal and now that it's completely public that most judges and the prosecutors and, by the way, even juries, will look at other cases with more of a jaundiced eye and not want to give those true defenses, creative as we might make them, true defenses or mitigation to a sentence, they may just be ignored because they'll remember the affluenza kid, the kid who got away with murder virtually and then, you know, struck his nose up at the system. So, I'm very concerned that their arrogance in not accepting and taking the benefit of the extraordinary deal that he got is going to come back to haunt other people who deserve a break.</s>COOPER: And Drew, when you hear that affluenza term -- I mean, the first time I heard it, I mean I just thought it was a joke. But there was a professional who is using that term. It's pretty incredible to me.</s>PINSKY: Well, there was a professional using it on the stand and I'm sure that professional is quite embarrassed now. He should be ashamed of himself. There is no diagnosis affluenza. It was a construct to help make the case that if you're going to take issue with people that live in extreme poverty, maybe you should give a similar situation for someone who's in these other extraordinary economic circumstances. We have another name for that. Just spoiled brat. I mean, I'm sorry, that's not a defense. And I agree, creativity from your defense witnesses may be warranted but I hope this really puts a stop to people being creative to the point of being ludicrous and, frankly, unethical.</s>COOPER: Dr. Drew, Mark O'Mara, thanks very much. Just ahead, another live hour of "360." It's another birther battle from Donald Trump this time taking in for Ted Cruz tonight (inaudible) from the interview in New Hampshire talked about this. We'll play you some of the interview, next.