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Well put. Just because O.J. was found not guilty and no big bankers went to jail in 2008 doesn't mean judges in other courtrooms are going to relax their standards when you flip them off

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Penelope-Soto-Woman-Who-...

OJ is an interesting example, as his sentence for armed robbery was considered extreme compared to the facts of his case, and influenced by the fact he away with murder.

I think it’s troubling that judges have the ability to hand down sentences far above some established norm, even if those sentences are legal.

> I think it’s troubling that judges have the ability to hand down sentences far above some established norm

I agree, but that's not what happened in Shkreli's case. The crime he committed really does have a very long sentence.

The SEC, DOJ, et al also have limited amounts of resources. They just can't go after everyone.

The fact that they can't go after everyone doesn't mean that they should punish Shkreli extra hard for what amounts to being a jerk.

It does actually.

If you waste their time by trolling them and drawing excessive attention, it consumes their resources responding to comments from the media. Instead of y'know, performing their investigatory/judicial functions.

Parent said should. This is not how law works, so it’s not how its enforcement should work.

It's pretty common for defendants who show remorse to get lighter sentences, no?

No, but the fact that Shkreli is a jerk, and showed no remorse for what he did, and disrespected the court mean that they shouldn't go easy on him, either.

One would assume however, that given the choice between

1) guy who lied to investors, still made them money (ie. Shkreli)

2) guy who lied to investors, lost 90% of their money (for example, ironically, Clinton's son in law [2], who has lost more money than the GDP of about 70 countries, and yet [3] happened)

They would have a strong preference for 2). But the SEC is a HUGE example of selective justice. Harsh "correct" treatment for whomever offends the elite, just for insulting and rejecting them (Shkreli IS an idiot, VERY publicly rejecting and insulting one of the elites WHILE she was running an election for president AND giving her an excuse ("threatening her") to send the law after him), or just by being poor. But nothing ever gets done about members of the elite, even if they're very low level.

And I get it, what Mr. Mezvinsky did was probably in a panic, and it was political decisions of someone else that did him in, nothing he could have done (as I'm sure is true for 90%+ of criminals of course, it never seems to count as an excuse). And it did do serious damage to his career. But he should be in prison, and owe hundreds of millions of dollars to people.

The issue I have with that is, if you or I, or probably anyone who may read this did what he did, we'd be locked in a maximum security prison for 40+ years, as well as being destitute.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Mezvinsky

[3] https://www.recode.net/2017/5/18/15660060/social-capital-hir...

[2] and the links going from it don't suggest anything about "lying to investors", merely making bad bets in Greece shortly before the crisis, in a fund that was advertised as making bets in Greece. Got a source about that, or is the argument just that everyone loosing a lot of money has to be fraudulent?

They have limited resources precisely so that they can't go after everyone.

Add revolving doors to this and everything makes sense.

On top of this, Shkreli brought a seedy but commonplace practice in the mighty pharma industry to the front page during a presidential campaign and made powerful enemies, including public opinion.

He wasn't sentenced for that, just like Al Capone wasn't sentenced for gangsterism.

> I'm not convinced it is a huge indictment of our society

The indictment of our society is that hundreds of millionaires can enrich themselves further via dishonest and illegal means, wreck world economies, and suffer no consequences, while a regular joe can be chocked to death for selling cigarettes on the street (disruptive!)

This isn't an impossible problem to fix. We just start voting for politicians willing to execute white collar criminals.

> Then all Shkreli had to do was (...) kiss the ring a little bit

An American writes this and doesn't shriek in anger. 2018.

So what you are saying is that he had his sentance increased because he hurt a judge's feelings?

That's basically what this comes down to.

Imagine if jay walking was punishable by death but it was only ever enforced against people who mocked Trump.

Inconsistent enforcement just allows the people in power to go after their political oponents for the "real" crime of hurting their feelings.

> That's basically what this comes down to.

The judge didn't create the law regarding securities fraud, nor did she instigate the charges of fraud, nor did she even have a voice when it came to deciding to convict (it was a jury trial). So how does this all boil down to a judge's feelings being hurt?

All crimes will be inconsistently enforced until we've built a policing apparatus that operates like the equivalent of red-light cameras but for every crime [0]. Hopefully we never get to that point, which means enforcement will continue to be resource-limited and inconsistent, so are you arguing for no enforcement at all?

[0] I'm being rhetorical of course. I don't mean to suggest at all that the enforcement of red-light violations, even when caught on camera, is anywhere near consistent: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/redlight/ct-met-...

> So how does this all boil down to a judge's feelings being hurt?

The way I read the parent is that this conviction would almost certainly not merit seven years in a typical non-Shkreli case.

But the judge handed down seven years, not because of his crime, but because of his attitude. The OP even suggested as much, suggesting if he had just "kissed the ring", the sentence would have been substantially less.

I read the parent's outrage as being that justice isn't blind - it metes out sentences based on the feelings of a judge toward a defendant's attitude. The crime itself only matters insofar as judges must abide by minimum and maximum sentencing guidelines. Within those guidelines, how you feel about a defendant is fair game.

edit: I would also add that, for those of us with less than stellar social skills, it's easy for social incompetence to be misinterpreted by other people as being an asshole. For us, this aspect of the justice system is at least mildly worrying.

In the US federal justice system, the US Sentencing Guidelines are officially advisory as of several years ago. Judges have to consult them and are expected to explain any deviation they adopt, but they can impose any sentence allowed by the statute which was violated.

I guess the statute text has embedded minimum and maximum sentencing guidelines in a sense, but the term Sentencing Guidelines in the US federal judicial context means something specific.

Why don’t we approach his sentence from the opposite direction: the prosecution proposed a 15-year sentence, which is less than a reported max of ~25 years under federal guidelines. 7 years is a fraction of what Shkreli could face, so why don’t we accuse her of being emotionally swayed to be lenient?

I agree that feelings are inextricably involved when human judges and juries make decisions. And all initiatives to correct for this — such as the 3-strikes law and mandatory sentencing guidelines — are likewise imperfect. I’m personally surprised at the severity of Shkreli’s sentence, but that’s because I don’t know this area of law or its precedent. And in the arguments I’ve seen asserting the sentence is too severe, I haven’t seen citations and evidence that contradict the precedent she used in her judgment.

Yes, much of Shkreli’s situation has no precedent. But we should consider that judges can act cautiously in extremely publicized trials, especially ones involving defendants who are rich enough to mount an appeal. You think the judge faces no risk if she decides to draw up a sentence without defensible legal basis?

I agree that we should worry if justice is meted out by judges who aren’t aware or empathetic toward defendants who are socially incompetent or otherwise social/psychological outliers. But just because popular media/opinion seems to hate Shkreli doesn’t necessarily mean we can ascribe such bias to the judge without empirical evidence.

>Why don’t we approach his sentence from the opposite direction: the prosecution proposed a 15-year sentence, which is less than a reported max of ~25 years under federal guidelines. 7 years is a fraction of what Shkreli could face, so why don’t we accuse her of being emotionally swayed to be lenient?

Because other, similar cases seem to have lesser sentences, not greater. This case has a larger sentence compared to other actual practical cases, though clearly it wasn't as large as it could legally have been.

I’m ready to be convinced, but which similar cases are we talking about?

Thank you for this response. I'm genuinely curious about this, though:

> You think the judge faces no risk if she decides to draw up a sentence without defensible legal basis?

What are the risks that judges face? My understanding is that Federal judges are appointed for life, with no chance of removal outside of impeachment. Is this not the case?

I didn’t mean to imply an obvious direct risk (e.g. impeachment or being voted out), but I do assume the judge is not completely uninterested in moving up the federal circuit. Being called out, or having a decision overturned due to impropriety, on a very famous case, may not be necessarily nothing to the judge. Of course it works both ways — a too lenient sentence puts her under scrutiny too. But I think burden of proof is on those who think she is being too harsh when it specifically comes to Shkreli.

That's not at all what's being said. There are far more possible cases that could be prosecuted than there are resources to prosecute them, so to better discourage all crime they will tend to go after higher profile targets, in particular those who flaunt their criminality.

Similarly, cops don't spend all their time giving out tickets to every single jaywalker or every single speeder. That would be a waste of their time. But they need to give out some tickets every once in a while or else the law becomes meaningless. Given a choice between giving a ticket to a random person spotted jaywalking, vs. giving a ticket to someone who took out a full page ad the day before declaring the time and place in which they plan to jaywalk and taunting the police for being unable to do anything about it, the police will choose to give the ticket to the latter person, and that totally makes sense to me.

That's very different from going after socially awkward people who don't know when they're being assholes.

> But they need to give out some tickets every once in a while or else the law becomes meaningless.

This has actually been shown to be a very bad idea. It is way better to punish immediately, even if lightly, every single transgression than to do it randomly but more severely. (Probably because we're all thinking "it won't happen to me".)

What you're saying afterwards is "the mundanes should not taunt their rulers". True in the world-as-is, but that reinforces a caste system. No. The cops and the judges are NOT nobility. They should NOT be treated as superior to the little people.

Shkreli is one of the “little people”?