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Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

That deal "avoids costly litigation", so say various "states' attorney generals". It's funny how those same AGs strong-arm the little people every single day, put them in jail before trial, and then offer them a choice: plead guilty, get time served, and go on your way. Or, plead not guilty, make bail, if you can, and get your ass handed to you because you can't afford a competent attorney and our judges and cops collude to make it impossible to get justice. If you can't make bail, then you will rot in jail until your first hearing, weeks from now, and you'll get an overworked public defender and get the same result. What do you choose?

The Sacklers need that kind of choice.

EDIT: The DoJ needs to confiscate their assets under current DEA assert forfeiture law, the same one the local cops use to steal from ordinary people without cause. Then arrest them. Let's see how long the litigation draws out under those circumstances.

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State/local prosecutors would rather go against an overworked overworked public defender than a well funded legal team from a firm that can eventually offer them a job.

Fortunately, federal prosecutors love going after high profile individuals and aren't scared of their lawyers.

> That deal "avoids costly litigation"

I guess it would be worse if this were criminal litigation and not civil litigation, but it's still kind of incredible to see such a naked admission that if you can outspend the attorney general's office, you'll get special treatment.

Which specific crimes were committed by which specific Sacklers? I'm sympathetic to the idea that they might have done something wrong, but the impulse to throw people we don't like in jail now and figure out what they did wrong later is very dangerous, and even if other people are treated that way it isn't an excuse to further indulge it.

The wealthy should suffer no more, or less, than ordinary folk. Our justice system is broken, and yet that breakage does not touch the Saklers. Maybe if it did, there'd be a cry for change from the people who can afford to spend the dollars needed to change the system.

I think this comment clearly illustrates the danger I mentioned; "they must have committed some crime" inevitably and often immediately turns into "it doesn't matter whether they committed any specific crime". If we turn the justice system into a purely political exercise, not even aspiring to the ideal of punishing people for specific crimes they've committed, what would the basis of a cry for change be?

They knew Oxycontin was addictive and claimed that it wasn't. They knew the deadly impact their drug was having on large groups of people, and yet did nothing to mitigate the impact.

These are very serious crimes. Indeed, even if they were not, harming society in this way should be criminalized.

I say this despite being pro-legalization. The issue isn't the drug itself, it's the lying, the undermining use of institutions like your family doctor, the FDA, to push this drug as if it were harmless, and to sit back and watch it take its toll, rolling in dough. It hurts.

https://www.judgeforyourselves.com/info/

>3 john oliver videos

>8 hour video deposition

pass

>"transcripts of calls to the bankruptcy court from those impacted by the opiod crisis"

People calling in and saying that oxycotin ruined their lives doesn't really count as a "specific crime".

From everything I've read - which is a lot - I think the criminal case under the law is less clear than say John Kapoor & Insys (who are in jail). But it seems the civil cases are much stronger, which is why this settlement is so shocking.

the Sacklers have tight control and micro managed decisions it's their intention & action. But Purdue was smart enough not to make spreadsheets tracking doctor bribe ROIs ...

I'm interested in why there isn't more info/investigation on the revelation in Gibney's doc that a Purdue exec sat in a motel room with the regulator in charge to write the original oxycontin label, which was then approved with very very questionable language. That potentially less addictive language was the entire lynchpin of their (minimally moral) crimes. Especially with any future revolving doors or benefits.

Completely agreed in that regard.

Or use their office for nonstarter political suits to rile up their base.

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