I keep trying to figure out how judges sentence criminals and it just keeps getting more confusing. Try to figure this – a former University of Penn professor pleads no contest to sexual assault of his best friend’s daughter. He is sentenced to one year house arrest and probation. I know what house arrest is, that’s where a rich guy has to sip martinis in his house rather than his country club. The kicker is, the judge winds up saying forget about the house arrest. The weather is nice in Milan, Italy, this time of year. Go work in a hospital for six months. If this sexual predator doesn’t get out of the country soon, the judge may shorten the sentence to a week in Disney World. Maybe standing in long lines would be considered adequate punishment.
Meanwhile, Phillies outfielder Jason Michaels slugs a cop in a dispute outside an Old City nightclub. It reportedly takes five cops to subdue him. Michaels gets 100 hours of community service where he can tell kids not to get into drunken brawls with police because if they’re not a professional athlete they might not be as lucky as he was. Oh, and by the way, Michaels can petition the court to expunge his record after he completes community service and learns how to hit a right-handed curveball. Chances are, soon enough, "J-Mike" will have a clean slate before the officer’s bruises disappear.
On the same day as these events, Philadelphia restaurant owner Neil Stein actually did get jail time for a year and a day and one year of supervised release. Stein didn’t attack a friend’s daughter or even land a punch on a police officer. It was tax fraud.
This got me thinking about someone I worked with who got four years for throwing some purchase orders to a contractor in return for unspecified favors. She didn’t assault anybody, either.
Please don’t take this as a defense for taking bribes or cheating on your taxes from your favorite liberal columnist, but if we look hard enough there’s a lesson to be learned. Out of the four cases discussed here, the two that got jail time were for non-violent crimes. Neither one got off with community service – by the way, why do we want some punk telling our kids how to behave when he’s only doing it to stay out of jail? You think maybe Stein or the person I know would have preferred spending time working in a hospital in Milan?
With prisons overflowing, I know judges are looking for creative ways to avoid sending anyone to jail unless they have to, but surely these cases exemplify how skewed justice can be. And maybe we don’t need to be protected from Michaels (except when he goes clubbing after ballgames), but surely if the courts should protect us from anyone, it’s from sexual predators. I think you can make the argument, with the bad publicity Stein got out of his addiction and tax fraud, he should have been the one given community service – maybe sweeping out Stephen Starr’s restaurants. As for the federal employee who got four years for messing with the award of contracts, she’s being hit with more than a million dollars in fines. Get her a job as a waitress and attach her wages for the next 100 years. Don’t let her wear any makeup. She’s never going to work for the federal government again, so who are we protecting by putting her in jail for four years?
As a footnote to all of this, the very same day these sentences were handed down, a Washington court sentenced a man to 12-1/2 years for passing secrets to Israel, a friendly nation. The judge even went so far as to say he doesn’t believe the man was attempting to harm America (apparently the misguided fool thought he could affect a change in our foreign policy with Iran through back channels). Apparently, if he had punched a cop or assaulted a girl while passing secrets, he would have been given time off with good behavior.
For authorizing break-ins, attempting to use the IRS to get his political enemies and obstructing justice, Richard Nixon was pardoned so he could walk the beaches of San Clemente and write his memoirs. For wiretapping citizens without a warrant, George W. Bush will get to retire to Crawford, Texas, in a few more years so he can clear more brush.
I know Dame Justice wears a blindfold, but maybe she ought to take it off.
