Thursday 4 October 2012

US Supreme Court Rejects Rubashkin's Appeal

«In urging justices to deny the appeal, the Office of the Solicitor General argued Rubashkin failed to prove that Reade should have recused herself or that he suffered any actual bias as a result. Reade has said that she was never informed who the target of the raid would be or where it would take place. Instead, she was involved in bringing in enough judges and court staff to have hearings at an offsite location, the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, which was used because of the large number of defendants.

The solicitor general's office also noted that Rubashkin's sentence was within advisory guidelines.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction and sentence last year.»

http://tinyurl.com/9bwz4l6

 
Gmar Tov,
Best Wishes for 5773!

2 comments:

Rabbi Rich Wolpoe said...

While there is little doubt that Rubashkin did something wrong during the Bankruptcy aspect....

It's really hard to fathom the severity of the sentence. It smacks of vindictiviness and not of justice.


Gmar Tov,
Best Wishes for 5773!

micha berger said...

Where I think we went wrong was in politicizing the trial process. By applying Jewish communal pressure, we pretty much forced Judge Reade to sentence according to the guidelines. And she did give him toward the lower edge of those guidelines. It is probable she found the sentence which she felt was the least possible so as not to appear to have given in to political pressure to give him the minimum.

A second piece of the problem is that sentencing guidelines don't serve their purpose. They were created to keep the sentencing relatively consistent, and not dependent on the luck of which judge one gets. In practice, they are set after a famous crime, and when public opinion rather than fairness drives the result. In particular, guidelines for bank fraud have grown so onerous, the norm is for a judge to "show clemency", and give a sane sentence rather than follow the guidelines.

But I believe we tied Judge Reade's hands. The Judiciary can't be seen as subject to pressure from voting blocks.

Last, this appeal was on transparently weak grounds. Lewin's staff claim that the fact that Rubashkin was standing before the same judge who approved the INS raid was withheld from them. But it was public knowledge, available in the media coverage of the raid itself -- over a year before Rubashkin was charged with anything! See this Google search of stories from 2008.