White Collar Prisoner Relief on Immediate Horizon
By Derek Gilna
Although
relief for drug offenses has gotten all of the headlines in recent weeks, what
about relief for white collar offenders?
Although it could be argued that all prisoners seeking relief should ask
for and receive a two-level reduction, it appears that the U.S. Sentencing
Commission is now on the verge of making that official.
Empowered
by their success in locking up tens of thousands of non-violent drug offenders
for long periods of time away from their families, often based upon hearsay and
perjured testimony, prosecutors then trained their weapons on white-collar
offenders, such as Jeffrey Skilling to show that they were evenhanded in
wielding the sledgehammer of prosecutorial power. However, unlike the often penniless drug user
suddenly converted by ambitious prosecutors into the role of major drug dealer to
justify draconian sentences, Skilling had sufficient money to defend himself,
and with numerous appeals and post-judgment petitions he has drawn blood.
After a
series of high-profile appeals that successfully attacked the length of his
sentence, he entered into an agreement last June with the government to receive
a reduced sentence of 14 years if he stopped filing (and winning) more appeals.
Currently at FPC Montgomery, he will be released in 2019.
As we speak,
the Sentencing Commission is holding hearings on a formal, two-level reduction
for white collar crimes, with a standard for realistically judging defendant’s
actual culpability. The move has been
applauded by many federal judges and the American Bar Association, who have
denounced the artificial guidelines sentences based upon often illusory “loss”
figures. Sound familiar?
There is no
question that yet another corner has been turned in the fight against
unreasonable and unrealistic sentences, either from rising public consciousness
of the problem, or from lack of funding for the federal criminal justice
colossus. The real question that must
ultimately be answered by that system is how long a sentence is rational to
deter future crime without destroying more lives and families than the alleged
crime ever did.
