We are getting it backwards. "WE" meaning the criminal defense community as we continue to criticize the sentence handed to Paul Manafort.
The internet and the opinion pages are alive with examples of harsh sentences handed out to the indigent clients of public defenders. "How could my client get life in prison in California for stealing a pair of pants while Manafort gets 47 months?" writes former Public Defender Rachel Marshall Sunday in an OpEd piece here in the Washington Post.
The question isn't why Manafort got 47 months. The question and conversation we need to be having is why a poor man with two priors decades old was sentenced to prison for life for stealing a pair of pants in a scheme to obtain money to buy a car seat for his new born son?
Judge Ellis, who sentenced Manafort was quoted over the weekend asking if anyone criticizing the sentence has ever spent a week in prison, or even a day? That is the conversation we need to be having.
Prison has a destructive effect on the individual and the soul.
Think for a moment the destructive effect on you-Ms. Reader- and your family, if you were incarcerated for six months. Would your bills be paid? Would you lose your house, your car, your credit rating? How would it affect your family? Assume an average life span of seventy five years. An eight year sentence takes ten percent of that precious time away. If you're 70 and statistically will not live until 80, would you celebrate a five year sentence? Does anybody truly think spending your remaining years behind bars, away from family and decent health care, is a lenient sentence? Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night sick? Take a Tylenol or a cough medicine or go to the ER. Good luck getting care within ten hours if you wake up at 2AM ill in prison. You sit and suffer with your fate in the hands of people who resent your presence and enjoy seeing you suffer.
And what of the deterrent effect? How many middle-aged white men who are lobbyists in DC sat around Saturday night and plotted to commit crimes and evade taxes because they see what happened to Manafort as a slap on the wrist and are willing to risk what he is going through?
Slap on the wrist? You go to a detention facility and be confined to a wheel chair and spend endless hours pondering what another human being is going to sentence you to. "You can beat the rap, but not the ride." Manafort did neither.
The conversation we need to be having as criminal defense attorneys is the disastrous affect prison has on people. That a year in prison affects a person's life for the next five years and five years in prison creates obstacles that most people will never overcome.
The conversation we should be having is why we have a system that allows prosecutors to threaten people with decades of time for crimes that do not physically hurt anyone. Tax evasion is bad. What Manafort did does not affect your blogger or you in the least. If Manafort had never been caught, life would have gone on unaffected for all of us.
We have it "SDRAWKCAB" which is "Backwards" spelled Backwards.
We are missing an opportunity and shame on us.
Coming Monday: Revenge of the Jedi and Mr. Markus.
When you see something that is not right, not fair, find a way to get in the way and cause trouble. Congressman John Lewis
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Sunday, March 10, 2019
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7 comments:
Not to mention he has been in solitary 9 months.
Next they'll put roger stone in solitary pretrial for meaningless lies to congress, which specializes in lying.
The south florida bloggers have a lot to say on Manafort... DOM wrote an op-ed: https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/433175-four-years-for-paul-manafort-is-the-right-sentence
Great post! Any intelligent forward thinking person would agree.
SDRAWKCAB your posting missed the point. The issue at hand is the inherent injustice in our justice system. It's about getting a judge known for harsh sentencing verses the one who just gave probation to our very own cat killer and potential future serial killer. It's about the undeniable disparity between the wealthy criminal having access to the best and most politically situated attorneys and the poor receiving representation from our humble but inexperienced public defenders. It's about the undeniable disparity between the type of punishment received by those criminals who are not non-Latin whites.
Your posting speaks about the judicious value in not giving elderly criminals long sentences. Would you want to apply that logic to the recently captured Joseph DeAngelo, AKA The Golden State Killer, who is 73 years old and is accused of 13 murders, 50 rapes and more than 100 burglaries. Should a lifelong serial killer be spared a life sentence because he's likely to die prison?
Finally, I take exception to your comments about white collar crimes. Just ask the thousands of victims of Bernie Madoff and Scott Rothstein. Madoff received a 150 year sentence at 71 years of age and Rothlein received a 50 year sentence and could be released as soon as 2052 at 90 years of age. As for Manafort, I would argue that laundering between $18 to $30 million and defrauding the United States of tax revenues warrants a long imprisonment. Let's not forget that those stolen millions actually support the operations of this country and its citizens - it takes a big pair of cojones to believe that your financial gain outweighs the best interests of the United States. Perhaps that explains the abundance of evidence reported by sociologists that these white collar criminals are psychopaths and every bit as dangerous as their violent counterparts.
I am frustrated by the magnitude of the problems with our justice system. But at the end of the day criminals must receive sentences that are consistent with their crimes. Age should not and cannot be a mitigating factor in both violent and white-collar crimes. Let's not forget that old and wise adage," if you can't do the time don't do the crime". By the way are criminal defense attorney fees based upon the shorter the sentence your client receives?
Well said!!
Come on man! Really? I think this guy gave a black congressman 13 years for bribery. You think old white republican scumbags don't get a huge break in the mans criminal justice system? Had this guy been black and worked for Obama he would've gotten the full 25.
The "meaningless lies" had to do with his performance as contact with foreign enemies on behalf of Trump. In case you forgot evidence, lying about collusion can be considered evidence of collusion. If the score of Trump operatives charged with meaningless lies in regards to contact with the Russians didn't do anything wrong then why are all of them lying?
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