But Friday, 18-year-old Soto was solemn as she acknowledged to Rodriguez-Chomat that she was wrong for insulting him. Her lawyer and relatives stood next to her as she apologized.
"My behavior was very irrational, and I apologize not only to the court and you, but to my family,” Penelope Soto told Rodriguez-Chomat.
Responding to her apology, Rodriguez-Chomat dropped the 30-day contempt sentence he had imposed on her when she first appeared before him on a Xanax possession charge. Among the reasons he cited for dropping her contempt sentence were her being a first-time offender, her admission that she had abused Xanax, her willingness to overcome her addiction by attending a drug-treatment program and her apology.
Rodriguez-Chomat said Soto wasn’t entirely to blame for her behavior.
“I should not even call you as totally responsible. We live in a society where if you listen to music, every other word is a profanity,” Rodriguez-Chomat said. “We live in a society where young people like you feel like it’s perfectly OK to call all kinds of names to their teachers and their professors and their friends. And they think that’s OK.”
Rodriguez-Chomat continued: “We live in a society where police officers are abused on a daily basis, mostly by young people who believe it’s OK to call policemen all kinds of names. That’s totally unacceptable.”
Rodriguez-Chomat also did away with the $10,000 bond he had set, enabling Soto to be released from jail straight from the courtroom.