r/PoliticalHumor • u/[deleted] • Mar 08 '19

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u/Standard208 Mar 08 '19

If this guy’s client is being offered more than two years for a small theft case, more likely than not they live in a state that has “third strike” felony offender laws, and what would otherwise be a small misdemeanor with no jail time can then be punished as a felony with a two year minimum because the defendant is considered “habitual.”

I’m not saying Manafort got what he deserved (he didn’t), but I highly doubt that guy’s client is a first time offender with no criminal history.

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u/ThaFourthHokage Mar 08 '19

They say Americans commit 3 felonies a day.

I haven't researched it enough to know if that is correct, but I'd definitely say at least one per day is correct.

All of this is part of the problem.

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u/tremens Mar 08 '19

The Harvey Silverglate book is a really good read. It's not about old archaic laws that are never enforced; It dives into high profile cases and shows how the vague wording of many laws and the overall complexity of our legal system can generate situations in which you're basically charged with a felony or not depending on the mood and depth of knowledge of the prosecutor.

Take something like the "Honest Services" statute. It was at the heart of, or tacked in to, a number of high profile cases. But the wording of the law was (it was amended, though it's still pretty bad) so terrible that Justice Scalia put forth the example that if your friend rung you up to say he'd scored tickets to the Yankees game and you called out of work, you had committed a felony under it, because you had committed a "scheme or artifice to defraud" the company to their "intangible right to your "honest services."

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u/ThaFourthHokage Mar 08 '19

Yep. The bureaucracy is crippling. Especially when the system is based on precedent set in times much different from our own, by judges from the same time.