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Corporate Crime and No Punishment
He's there for life.
What did Leandro do wrong?
In 1995, he stole five videotapes from a K-Mart in Ontario, California.
Under the state's three strikes law, Andrade was sentenced to life in prison.
The first two offenses were for non violent home burglaries.
In 2003, 60 Minutes ran a profile of the Andrade case.
Andrade appealed his sentence to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2003, in a 5-4 decision, the Court decided that the sentence wasn't cruel and unusual.
And upheld the sentence.
Okay, let's give the justice system it's due.
Let's say you can be sent away for life for stealing $153.54 worth of videotapes - a misdemeanor - if your first two convictions were felonies.
Question - what about the individual CEOs who headed the nation's largest Wall Street firms and banks?
The ones involved in tanking the country's economy and sending it into the great recession? What about them?
Leandro Adrade is in prison for life for stealing five videotapes.
What about the CEOs of the big Wall Street firms?
Why do they go free?
To find out, I went down to George Washington University this morning.
There, the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States was holding a press conference to release its final report.
Throughout the presentation, the members of the Commission were using words like - reckless, irresponsible, risky, and imprudent - to describe the actions of these Wall Street firms and their CEOs.
But nothing about crime.
Nothing about corporate crime.
A bit strange, wouldn't you say?
Especially since the 10 member Commission was created by the aptly named Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009.
So, we asked - why no talk about corporate crime?
Didn't you find corporate criminal activity?
"Our mandate was to refer to the Attorney General or to the state authorities any individual that our investigations showed may have violated U.S. laws - whether civil or criminal," said Commissioner Brooksley Born. "We did make several of those referrals. But we are not going to talk about any of the details of those referrals."
Okay, so the Commission believed there were crimes committed.
Otherwise, why would they refer cases for criminal prosecution?
If the Commission believed there were crimes committed, why didn't they put this in their report?
Why all the talk about recklessness, and irresponsibility, and risky and imprudent behavior - but no talk about corporate criminal activity?
Why not?
Because we live a country with two systems of justice.
One for the Leandro Andrades of this world.
And one for the Wall Street banks and their executives.
And the oil companies and their executives.
A similar report was released two weeks ago about the BP oil spill.
Leading authorities on the Clean Water Act predict that the companies involved with the Gulf Oil Spill will soon be criminally charged.
But the BP Oil Spill Commission also refused to talk in the words of crime and punishment.
That kind of talk is reserved for street criminals.
Former Senator Bob Graham sat on both Commissions.
Two weeks ago, when I asked Graham whether "there should be increased resources to criminal environmental enforcement to help deter this kind of behavior," Graham answered this way:
"When we first met with the president and he gave us our assignment, there was an understanding that our purpose was to develop the factual record upon which this event occurred, that it would be for others, specifically the Department of Justice, to determine if those facts constituted a criminal act, and if so, for what specific purpose."
"So we did not undertake the issue of attempting to determine criminal liability. I will leave it to the readers of the report as to whether they believe they can find it in our factual program. Nor did we look specifically at the question of the resources necessary to reach a judgment as to whether a crime had been committed."
As of this writing - in both the BP oil spill and the financial meltdown cases - no high level executives have been held responsible.
Neither Commission addressed the question of corporate criminal liability.
Or resources necessary to prosecute these corporate crimes.
Meanwhile, Leandro Andrade sits in prison for life.
I'm okay with disparities in our justice system.
We are, after all, imperfect beings.
But I'm not okay with bright, gifted people laying out the details of arguably the two largest corporate criminal cases of our times.
And not at least acknowledging the obvious.
That we have two systems of justice.
One for the corporate class from which the commissioners came.
And one for the rest of us.
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32 Comments so far
Show AllIf there is selective enforcement of the law, then there is no rule of law.
For those who would like some further stats here's another interesting article entitled "20 Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime" by Mr. Mokhiber.
http://www.alternet.org/story/54093/
An excerpt:
20. Corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.
Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.
The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery -- street crimes -- costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.
The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds -- Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron -- swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.
Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year.
The most obscene aspect of seeing these Wall Street criminals waltzing around free, raking in their record bonuses and getting their taxes cut for good measure, is that most of mainstream America doesn't much seem to care ... or even be paying attention.
They're too busy watching the latest American Idol, I guess. Or Sarah Palin. Or whatever vapid entertainment people are narcotocizing themselves with these days.
Sigh. As long as Wall Street criminals -- and political criminals, like Cheney-Rove-Rumsfeld -- get away with blatant deceptions and crimes and yet never end up paying any kind of price for it, we as an American people are basically saying: Go ahead, hit us again. And again. And again.
And when we fall to the ground, well, heck, feel free to just kick us in the head.
Where's the outrage? Where are the pitchforks that should be converging on Wall Street and forcing these CEOs to flee to their estates in the Hamptons?
As long as mainstream America remains apathetic and ignorant, it gets just what it deserves.
We also have to remember that ordinary street criminals don't have a full-spectrum propaganda apparatus aimed at helping hide and massage away their crimes.
Oh look honey, they're doing an interview with Jamie Dimon on CNBC!
He's such a nice man.
People understand stealing videos and they understand drunk driving or mugging someone ,but they cannot grasp crimes on a scale as massive as the Gulf Oil spill ( it's viewed as if it's an act of GOD or an accident, not a crime) , or the Wall st. meltdown ( again it's seen as some kind of accounting error or act of GOD not a series of intentional acts by Corps. and they're owners.) A type of cognitive dissonance sets in when a crime reaches the level of genocide , ecocide or econocide and people simply cannot wrap their minds around such events. Stalin was once quoted as saying something along these lines. 'The death of a single man/person is a great tragedy, but the death of millions is merely a statistic." I think whatever psychological principle underlies such a paradox is why sometimes great crimes escape punishment.
==In 2003, in a 5-4 decision, the Court decided that the sentence wasn't cruel and unusual. And upheld the sentence.==
By now I have more respect for nine hyenas selected at random than I do for the Supreme Court of the United States.
For more than a decade I have published on the Internet my proposals to overhaul the U.S. Supreme Court. These several proposals are =outside-the-box= and some readers think I am just =having them on=.
Nope. I mean every word of it.
Trylon
Given the Corporation is seen as a "Person" The three strikes you are out rule should apply to them.
Many Health Care Companies as example have violated the law more then 3 times and simply paid fines.
Many Companies have violated Enviromental laws multiple times and simply been fined.
A company that commits three crimes should have all assets seized It should be broken up and sold off with the proceeds going to Government Coffers. If "innocent shareholders" are caught holding paper not worth anything, then they should not have invested their money in a Criminal enterprise.
"Given the Corporation is seen as a "Person" The three strikes you are out rule should apply to them.
Many Health Care Companies as example have violated the law more then 3 times and simply paid fines."
Thanks for pointing out the 5 ton elephant in the room. I would love to nail Obama with a question relating to three strikes laws applying to the corporate person at a press conference.
The criminal justice system in Calif., is run by ballot initiatives one of which was put into the State Constitution 3 strikes you're out. No doubt the PIC, prison industrial complex, funded it, the initiative was championed by a person who had a family member murdered by someone who had been released from prison who had 3 convictions. Now, the Calif., PIC spends more on prison than it does on higher education. Another 3 strikes convict is in prison for life for stealing a bicycle. As for the SCOTUS as we well know common sense has no place in the criminal justice system and the SCOTUS is subject to bribes and corruption and the PIC may have influenced the 5 to 4 decision. Remember, Scalia said that if person had received a death sentence and was later found to be innocent of the crime that he was sentenced to death for is not grounds to rescind the death sentence. Until their is a daily protest outside the SCOTUS to protest being the criminals they are nothing will change in this country.As much as I detest Andrew Jackson, the SCOTUS made a decision that He opposed and refused to implement the Court's decision saying that if the SCOTUS liked the decision so much they could implement and fund it. The decision was favorable to the Indigenous Americans and Jackson was for the genocidal extermination of them but He stood up to the court. Jackson also decided not to fund the court I think. The SCOTUS has successfully pulled off a judicial coup and eliminated all aspects of the already weak democratic processes in this country by legalizing crimes and criminal conduct by politicians. The Federal judiciary is the easiest branch of government to corrupt and its 1803 decision, heralded and led by then Chief Justice John Marshall, put the SCOTUS as superior to the other branches of government and decided its decision cannot be overturned. I expect the SCOTUS will decide that common sense is illegal and anyone advocating it will be subject to rendition for torture or assassination.
And, as I learned from thumbing through the FBI uniform crime reports, corporate white collar crime causes more monetary damage than all the robberies, thefts, larcenies and burglaries COMBINED. the most recent and clear example is the Bernie Madoff fraud. Just his single case alone was more costly for the year than all those other crimes combined. This has always been the case and, as pointed out in this piece, punishments almost appear to be inversely proportionate to the crime.
I'd love to pose this question to one of the victims of Bernie Madoff; Given the choice would you rather lose your entire life savings OR have a burglar break into your residents a couple of times stealing some jewelry, lose cash and your flat panel TV?
"Because we live a country with two systems of justice.
One for the Leandro Andrades of this world.
And one for the Wall Street banks and their executives.
And the oil companies and their executives."
And celebrities, let's don't forget celebrities, too. Look at OJ, look at all the celebs that only serve a day or two for drunk driving, or that get to leave jail to "go to work"...
I'm planning a crime spree, but want to cover my ass first.
I'm too old to work for a corporation.
I guess I'll have to run for congress.
dbl
Hey kids, if you're going to steal, steal big
steal a little and they'll throw you in jail. steal alot and they''ll make you a king.
--Dylan
The business and law schools teach the TOO BIG TO FAIL strategies.
True, bogi666 January 29th, 2011 9:14 am, along with the erroneous and baffling nonsense that 'all businesses are the same and should be run that way' which leads to the MBA grads having no particular knowledge or concern for whatever product or service their firm churns out. However, like a pernicious disease that kills its host, the diversified global mega-corporation is gradually killing off its markets as it makes paupers of its customers by steadily reducing wages and cutting employees -- paupers that will be too poor to buy the latest electronic gadget, or new clothes, or trendy vehicle. In the US, we are quickly arriving at the 'tipping point' where there aren't enough customers here to buy the products cheaply made overseas by low-paid workers. When we reach that point, we'll have a global economic collapse that will dwarf the Great Depression. We've already seen the complete failure of Wall Street and banking that had to be salvaged by the US taxpayer; the next failure will be Walmart and similar Big Box stores, along with wildly inflated oil prices, China refusing to lend us any more money to stay afloat, the toppling of the tech and gold markets, and then the game is up. There will be no entity wealthy enough to save the global corprocracy from the inevitable results of their own greed and shortsightedness. I only hope we'll be able to pick up the pieces and learn our lesson from this massive meltdown.
The length of time it took to put Mr Andrade in prison vs the length of time they take to proscecute these a-holes...
and I went looking for an explanation of the Goldman Sachs charges last year and found a bunch of April postings for when GS was charged, then a post for the statement by GS as to what they thought of themselves...nothing else. How is that?
Any resources for further inquiry?
14th Amendment guarantees "equal protection under the law."
Without prosecution of all crime, that guarantee is hollow.
i hope that the insanity of california (a place i once looked to for sanity) is passing like a cloud in the sky.
One of the major reasons for California's economic meltdown is the idiotic 'three strikes and you're out' law pushed through for law-and-order' political reasons by the GOP and Blue Dog Dems. Not only Mr. Andrade, but many other prisoners are being held for life for drug offenses like possession of marijuana, and even ignoring traffic warrants, which raise the original misdemeanor to a felony. This is a 'justice system' gone mad. The whole country is going broke being 'tough' on crime instead of trying to find humane and reasonable ways to treat and process criminals and innocent people who get caught in the system. It's what happens when you elect people based on sound bites rather than intelligence and expertise.
An excellent piece, and oh so true!
The rule of law in this country is a joke.
Acquaintances of mine that work at a Big Box store have told me that policy is not to stop shoplifters, too expensive. Things are getting better ;)
This is just one example of why America is NOT the best country in the world.
An example of how the U.S. justice system is nothing better than HORRID.
Killing one is murder. Killing 1 million is foreign policy.
Truth and justice are irrelevant in the legal system - which too often is just a jobs program for lawyers. Approx 300 have been freed from death row as a result of DNA and the Innocence Project - this is after they served many years in prison. Do we need any more proof the the legal system does not work.
Anyone with enough money can hire 'expert witnesses'. With enough money purchased testimony can be designed to fit any goal desired. This is a legally permitted part of the process.
Our Constitution makes it very clear that if our Goverment is full of corruption, and has lost it's way, then "We the People" have the right to remove them. The amount of criminal activity,that has truley risen within our own Goverment, must be dealt with.Almost everyone of our delegates are corrupt and take payments for thier votes. We must illiminate Lobbyest they have to go, then may our laeaders will make decisions for us, instead of big oil, and electricity etc.
Hmmm
Once again, the ruling elite blinded by greed, have forgotten their history. And thus we see the seeds of revolution have been sown.
rough translation: YOU CAN'T SCR*W ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME. EVENTUALLY THEY WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD
Yes John, there are two americas. We know where our (the majority) constitution is, but where is theirs (the top 1%) kept hidden from the public's eyes?
Hmmm. It seems like there is only one system of Justice active here. In the case of life imprisonment for stealing from homes and stores, a sentence was rendered. I doubt the man doing these crimes was unaware of the consequences.
In the other system no justice exists at all.
Lets be clear on what is and is not a place to speak of justice.
"I'm okay with disparities in our justice system.
We are, after all, imperfect beings. "
Really? You're "OK with that", Russell?
It is not the neocons and the corporate criminals that pose the biggest threat to Americans and people in other nations abroad. It's the spoiled, self-centered middle class princes of mediocrity like YOU who:
(1) don't care so long as it's not YOU suffering.
(2) got handed all the good jobs without even having to have the least little bit of integrity or moral compass at the expense of all those (particularly those over age 40) who got denied job opportunities for being "too old", or downsized out with nothing.
It was indifferent, self-absorbed, self-indulgent middle class automatons like YOU who sat back and said "Oh, well, life's not fair" in response to rising poverty, hunger and homelessness in the face of disappearing opportunities.
It was selfish middle class consumerists with no thought for anyone else who also deserve the chance to live a decent life that allowed America's maternal and infant mortality rates surpass even those in several Third World countries. You've got yours, after all — so what if POOR women and girls suffer and die on American soil, right? Because YOU are "OK with that."
It was self-centered middle class snobs who said and did nothing while POOR women's access to abortion and reliable contraception was taken away by theocratic domestic terrorists. But you've got your comfortable life, your "important" job, all is right in your own little world — which is why you're "OK with that."
Your moral compass and your "contributions" to journalism are analogous to the contribution of coprophagy to cuisine. But what the hell, you're "OK with that" so long as you've got yours.
READ http://www.citizen-soldier.org/
The main problem with these narratives like "Corporate Crime and No Punishment" is the way it keeps getting told ad nauseam in journal articles. We have no problem outlining the above misdemeanor when it's context is within the working class, but when it comes to outlining the context and cost of corporate crime like in the above story, the narrator holds back on the details and amounts stolen or diverted, etc..It is like one does not dare go into details when crimes are being commited by rich CEOs, investors and their cronies. So how does a society punish "sacred corporatist cows" for their crimes when such crimes are never clearly defined in all of their context and extent?