This morning NFL player Plaxico Burress pleaded guilty to a weapons charge and will serve two years in prison. The Blog To Be Named Later returns to ponder the logic, or lack thereof, of sentencing guidelines in this country.
So Plaxico Burress shows up at a nightclub. Instead of hiring a security detail to protect him, he carries a gun. There is no evidence at all that Burress intended to use the gun in the commission of a crime, violent or otherwise. The idiot then proceeds to shoot himself in the leg accidentally. Now’s he is going to jail for two years. For what? Being an idiot?
How does this make sense? There is a shortage of jail space for actual criminals, many of whom get off on technicalities, but we’re going to spend $50,000 over two years to imprison a millionaire football player whose only crime was possessing a gun to protect himself? Yeah, I understand, it was an unregistered gun, he was in a state with strict weapons possession guidelines. Still, where’s the victim here?
Wouldn’t it have been far more productive to impose a stiff fine and use the money to educate people about gun safety? Wouldn’t it be better to give Burress 500 hours of community service and make him an advocate for the issue?
This reminds me of the Martha Stewart case.
In another instance of legal brilliance, Martha Stewart was sent to prison for insider trading because she sold stock to avoid a $45,000 loss. She’s worth $1 billion. The fine she paid? $30,000. Lovely. Let’s have the public spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to try, convict, and imprison a billionaire and then fine her $30,000. Well done.
I have a better idea. Next time Martha commits another victimless crime, let’s try MAKING some money off this deal. You take half of Martha’s money away. That’s $500 million, leaving her with only half a billion. Wah. Then you take that $500 million, and with an average cost of $14.5 million, build 34 schools with the money. Doesn’t that make more sense?
In my home state, former governor Edwin Edwards was sent to prison in 2002.
He’s still there. His crime was taking $400,000 from the (then) owner of the San Francisco 49ers in exchange for assistance in getting a casino license in Louisiana. First of all, I’m not sure I see the crime here. Maybe it’s blackmail, or maybe it’s just a straight up business deal. Edwards was no longer governor when this happened. He took money in exchange for a promise to use his political influence to get public officials to do something. That’s called lobbying. Second, if it is a crime, who’s the victim? DeBartolo, the owner? No. He wanted the deal. Actually, if he’s a victim of anything, it’s being pulled into court to testify, which eventually cost him his team.
The U.S. Attorney in the case identified the victim as the State of Louisiana, because of the damage to its reputation Edwards caused. Excuse me? How the hell do you damage the reputation of Louisiana?!? Is that possible? Consider:
-State Treasurer Edward Burke, who fled to Honduras in the late nineteenth century with $600,000 of the people’s money. (That’s about $130 million in today’s dollars)
-Governor Richard Leche, who famously said, "When I took the oath of office I didn't take any vow of poverty”, and then stole millions of dollars from LSU.
-The three consecutive Insurance Commissioners who went to prison over the last twenty years.
-Louisiana has more federal corruption convictions per person than any state in the country.
-Louisiana citizens elected the former Grand Wizard of the KKK to its state legislature. Later, he went to prison too.
Yeah, it was Edwin Edwards that made Louisiana look bad. Whatever the merits of the Edwards case, in the end the United States Government sent a 75 year old man to prison for ten years for a white collar crime. Instead of taking away an old man’s last few years of life, why not punish him financially and let the poor people of Louisiana benefit? Why not do this with all wealthy individuals convicted of a non-violent crime? Or does that make too much sense?
