Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is expected to announce whether it will review the case of Sholom Rubashkin, who has attained cause celebre status for the remarkable events surrounding his trial and sentencing. Everything about this case is BIG. Months of planning and hundreds of agents went into pulling off a 2009 raid at Rubashkin's kosher meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa. More than 375 workers were arrested -- many ultimately deported -- and hundreds of charges lodged against Rubashkin alleging child labor and immigration law violations. He was acquitted of every one.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors transformed one count of bank fraud into more than 90 counts by the time the case went to trial. Rubashkin was convicted on most, and the government dropped its next bomb: It planned to ask the judge to impose a sentence of life in prison. This was too much for 23 former high-ranking Department of Justice officials and U.S. Attorneys. They sent an unprecedented letter to the judge decrying the audacity of the proposal. The government blinked and reduced its request to 25 years.
On June 21, 2010, Judge Linda Reade sentenced this first time, nonviolent, well-regarded defendant to 27 years in federal prison.
Only after the trial did the defense receive stunning news. Judge Reade had met secretly and repeatedly with prosecutors and law enforcement in the months before the agents descended on the plant, helping to plan the raid and coordinate the processing of arrested workers. Legal experts cried foul, and Rubashkin's counsel raised serious questions about Judge Reade's objectivity and investment in ensuring a harsh outcome. Those ex parte meetings, as well as how the judge arrived at the functional life sentence for Mr. Rubashkin, are the grounds for the cert petition the Court is considering today.
Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, Mr. Rubashkin will be nearly 80 years old before he returns to his family. How could such a thing have happened?
While Judge Reade and an overzealous, over-the-top team of prosecutors have come under a great deal of criticism, they weren't acting alone. Congress and a body called the United States Sentencing Commission share a lot of blame for making the absurd sentence imposed on Mr. Rubashkin possible. Together, they have created and inflated sentencing guidelines for fraud cases that routinely call for the kind of outlandish sentences like the one Mr. Rubashkin is serving.
As FAMM and others have noted previously, the Sentencing Commission, frequently goaded by Congress and the Department of Justice, has established recommended sentences for fraud cases that are, in the words of one of the judges considering them, "a black stain on common sense." Another has lamented "the utter travesty of justice that sometimes results from the guidelines' fetish with absolute arithmetic, as well as the harm that guideline calculations can visit on human beings if not cabined by common sense."
From 1987, when the guidelines were first introduced, to 2001, the Sentencing Commission repeatedly revisited the fraud guidelines (originally designed to impose "short but certain" terms of imprisonment), adding enhancements that, when applied at sentencing, increased sentences for a variety of factors. Then, in 2001, the guidelines got a complete makeover, and sentences were further increased based on the amount of loss in a case. But that was not the end. Congress, irked by corporate scandals, turned right around and ordered the Sentencing Commission to again increase sentences. It did so with a raft of amendments that increased fraud sentences across the board and enhanced sanctions based on factors that are present in nearly every major fraud. The Affordable Care Act provided yet another opportunity for new, higher sentences that lawmakers could not pass up.
The resulting guidelines for fraud suffer from two major weaknesses that expose first-time offenders like Sholom Rubashkin to life in prison.
First, the amount of monetary "loss," whether real or merely intended, has become the big driver of sentence lengths. The guideline does not account for intent, or even if the offender personally benefitted from the crime. People who offend to keep a business afloat are treated the same as those who offend for their own personal gain. The guideline also fails to differentiate between those who pose a significant danger of reoffending and those who will likely have learned their lesson.
Second, redundant sentencing enhancements for ubiquitous conduct, including for committing the fraud using "sophisticated means" or affecting 250 or more people, quickly inflate sentences beyond reason.
Such high sentences are very attractive to prosecutors, who can and frequently do seek lengthy terms of incarceration, sometimes as an inducement to defendants to plead guilty quickly and cooperate with the government in exchange for a lower sentence recommendation. Decisions about which charges to bring, which to bargain away, and what sentence to recommend can take place off the public record, behind the closed doors of a prosecutor's office.
So, while it is easy to point the finger at the judge in this case, Congress, the DOJ and the Sentencing Commission have all acted to make harsh sentences like the one Judge Reade imposed the norm. Indeed, more and more judges are using their authority to depart, including from excessive fraud guideline.
Happily, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, at the urging of the Department of Justice -- which has come to see that something is wrong here -- is undertaking a multi-year review of economic crime sentences.
Hopefully, Mr. Rubashkin's case will be heard, and he won't have to wait for a fair punishment.
...Cry me a river!
WASHINGTON - A well-connected kosher slaughterhouse king convicted of fraud at his Iowa plant has rustled up a herd of New York pols to try to win him a reduced sentence.
The prominent Lubavitcher from Brooklyn, Sholom Rubashkin, was sentenced last summer to 27 years in prison for 86 counts of financial crimes as well as LYING ON THE WITNESS STAND!
Yet the disgraced businessman has friends in high places, including Reps. Anthony Weiner, Jerrold Nadler, Eliot Engel, Carolyn McCarthy, Edolphus Towns, Carolyn Maloney, Steve Israel and Yvette Clarke, who have lobbied for a review of his case.
Rubashkin has also enlisted more than 30 other lawmakers from New Jersey to California to voice outrage, along with several former U.S. attorneys general.
The head of the Democratic National Committee, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, used part of her time at a recent hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder to remind him to review Rubashkin's sentence.
"Supporters say mob hit men and pedophiles don't even get 27 years, let alone a businessman convicted of a nonviolent crime."
Yes, I know the OP wants us outraged by such a strict sentence, but I think the outrage should be the other way. Life without parole should be an option for repeat offenders of this magnitude. If you destroy that many lives, it should not matter if you did it with a pen or with a gun.
The evidence was what it was, but the process that took place is under scrutiny.
The person who steals 100$ may be doing so just to feed their family. Feed their family and he does not need to steal. Someone who steals millions does not NEED it. They simply can NOT be satisfied. They can be punished as an example to others, so other greedy bastards think twice before robbing thousands of people.
Go here: http://www.justiceforsholom.org
The I.C.E. ruined Postville. They were cruel and abusive to so-called 'illegal aliens' even while the U.S. Govt. was unsure how to treat these people...the law was vague.
Many were angry at S.M. Rubashkin for not unionizing his plant: "He doesn't care about his workers!" many said.
Three Fazio family members, heads of this union extorted and harassed their own members...who would join such a union...corruption is rampant in America!
http://www.chabad.info/index.php?url=article_en&id=25453
How will America improve...and before a good and honest country as its founding fathers (and mothers!) wished?
...."The U.S. Congress officially recognized 'The Seven (7) Noahide Laws' in legislation which was passed by both houses. Congress and the President of the United States, George Bush, indicated in Public Law 102-14, 102nd Congress, that the United States of America was founded upon the Seven Universal Laws of Noah, and that these Laws have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization.