The guidelines on white collar cases are so out of whack. Everyone knows it. They lead to absurd sentences for first time, non-violent offenders.
And even trying to figure out the guidelines is oftentimes based on guesswork. Some appellate courts are starting to put district judges on blast. Here's the Third Circuit, reversing a monster sentence in a pill mill case because the district judge's calculations were just speculation:
Yet the evidence did not support a reliable extrapolation. The District Court used the medical expert’s review of twenty four files to infer the illegality of thousands of other prescriptions. In the court’s view, that sample size was not “statistically valid.” JA 2336. Yet it extrapolated anyway. And without much explanation from the District Court, Titus had no chance to “respond meaningfully, or for that matter, at all.” United States v. Nappi, 243 F.3d 758, 766 (3d Cir. 2001).
Plus, the government never showed that the sample was large enough to be reliably representative of the remaining thousands of prescriptions. (Though statistical evidence can help to show that a sample size is large enough to support reliable inferences, we do not hold that such evidence is always necessary.) Nor did it document proper extrapolation methods. And it never explained how extrapolating from this sample could prove the huge drug weight by a preponderance of the evidence. So the sentencing court failed to “ensure that the Government carrie[d] [its] burden [of proof] by presenting reliable and specific evidence.” United States v. Roman, 121 F.3d 136, 141 (3d Cir. 1997) (internal quotation marks omitted).
4 comments:
White collar sentences are lenient. The Guidelines are low and downward variances are common. Judge's don't seem so care that the offender spent all the money or did not cooperate to disgorge the ill gotten gains. It's to the point that victims are left justifiably unsatisfied. The short sentences imposed, the time served in federal prison camps, the abuse of RDAP, the ability to keep the stolen money, and low likelihood of being successfully investigated, an objective observer could conclude that crime does pay.
Fraud is a big problem worldwide. Most countries do not have the resources or expertise to truly combat it. We do. We should do better.
Drug dealing in deadly pills really isn’t white collar crime.
I must admit I am pleased that statistics gets its proper mention here. Larger sample sizes generally lead to increased precision when estimating unknown parameters. Confidence intervals matter.
What 11:22 said!!
Let's be honest David, when you say first time non violent offenders in the federal system you are mostly talking about middle aged white men. When you think of the hundreds, and sometimes thousands of victims, they created the convicted deserve no more mercy than other criminals. Seldom are their fraud victims the wealthy... much more likely to be middle class who will suffer the economic impact the rest of their life. I'm totally with 11:22 on this one.
Post a Comment