Paul Manafort

[Yonadav]

"My understanding is that 47 months was a very light sentence. I haven't checked into the facts on the matter yet, but I guess he was expected to get more like 20 years."


FUUUUuuuuuuuCk!  That's harsh.   Here, people do less for murder , rape, and for molesting children.  We have no death penalty, and no sentences without the possibility of parole. However, some especially heinous offenders are never released.

I'm basing my comments on what I' was told by a friend I had who had done 12 months for breaking (burglary) in our 165 year old State prison. I suspect  Manafort would serve his time in a minimum security prison.(?)

Is there any possibility of a presidential  pardon? I was thinking of just before Donald leaves office. I guess that might be a bit too humane for Donald.

I think that a lot of people who don't live in the US don't understand how sick American society is with its worship of celebrities and wealth. We are notorious for slapping white collar criminals on the wrist for super crimes involving millions of dollars, while throwing the book at poor people. One lawyer has compared Manafort's sentence to the sentence of one of his clients, a poor black woman, who was 'offered' a plea deal in which she would be sentenced to between 3 to 6 years for stealing $100 worth of quarters from a laundry room. Admittedly, there is probably a lot not being said in that comparison, since I assume the woman who stole the quarters must have had priors. But still.

Manafort is not exactly a first time offender. He has multiple offences over a long period of time, and simply got busted for all of them at once. I think that our justice system is a little confused about what a 'first time offender' is.

On the other hand, a close reading of the coverage about this did turn up one interesting nugget. The judge who sentenced Manafort has a long track record of being critical of mandatory sentencing that has prevented him from giving a little bit of leniency to criminals whose crimes involved drugs and guns. He seems to be a judge feels that we sentence people to prison for too long in most cases, and feels that mandatory sentencing guidelines have forced him to give very lengthy sentences to poor people whose crimes involved drugs and guns, while giving more lenient sentences to white collar criminals simply because he is not constrained to mandatory sentencing with white collar criminals.
 
We incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any other nation in the free world. But we are wealth and celebrity obsessed, and white collar crime is pretty much viewed as respectable. Wealthy people who don't practice tax evasion and deceive financial institutions are cucks. Had it not been for his connections to Trump, Manfort probably would have never been brought to trial.