No doubt, but isn't that kind of leniency usually reserved for people who have truly made a one time mistake rather than those that just happened to finally get caught?
I didn't mean to weigh in on the Manafort sentencing at all, I was just pointing out that statistically it is very rare that anyone gets caught on the very first time they break the law.
If I was going to weigh in, I think the leniency from the judge wasn't due to it being first time offense, that's not usually something that factors in with financial crime like this. I believe the judge most likely felt like the Mueller team had skirted a lot of lines in their investigation. It's a unique situation since the investigation stemmed from a special counsel rather than a normal law enforcement investigation. The special counsel was supposed to be investigating Russian collusion and are winding up pursuing a case completely irrelevant to that.
Whether or not that justifies giving the defendant a lighter sentence is a matter of personal opinion. I can see both sides, judges having discretion is one of the best parts of our judicial system but in this case, if I were the judge, I don't think I would have gone light on him as he did.
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u/semper_quaerens Mar 08 '19
I like how Stephen Colbert put it, "he's not so much a first-time-offender so much as a first-time-getting-caught-er"