Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes again delays start of 11-year prison term
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Seems kind of strange that she could (presumably) be in court and sentenced and not immediately taken away to start her time.
> Holmes, 39, was expected to serve her time in at a minimum-security prison camp in Houston, Texas.
Minimum security prisons are the kind where you can leave during the day to go to work! None of that slave labor shit making license plates or filling in at McDonalds, either, like actually go to a regular job and earn money. They're called "Club Fed" for a reason.
I thought anyone with over a decade of prison time wouldn't be eligible for such white glove treatment but nope.
"Rules for thee but not for me" when you've got Kissinger on board
If at least half of the goal of jail/prison is rehabilitation, it makes sense to me.
EDIT: Apparently the feds have an 85% time served rate so it actually will be closer to a decade served.
This just makes me so angry. The amount of corruption, racism, and incompetence for this to happen is staggering and quite honestly incomprehensible. A, what appears to be non-U.S. citizen, person makes a bogus accusation against two black men who are U.S. citizens. The accusation has no consistency or accuracy, and not a single shred of evidence was ever presented. And the accusation was theft of a backpack. So the mere word of a foreigner sentences a man to prison for over three years, with no case brought to court, and several judges offering plea bargains. How did they even justify the plea bargains? "Oh, you're in prison for no reason so here's a plea bargain for random crimes we've made up?" If the district attorney's office is so busy, why does someone need to stay in prison for that? Like, you're supposably busy, but he has to stay in prison because you're busy?
Every single one of those judges, district attorneys, police officers, correctional officers, and prison administration should face penalties.
Edit: And it turns out that that place is not even a prison. It's a holding facility for people who are awaiting trials and other court actions, i.e., innocent people.
A low security federal prison pretty much meets your expectations of what a prison is minus the gang activity.
Do yourself a favor and google image search for "FPC Bryan" if you want an idea of what her stay will look like.
With that said, my favorite is the pay per day way to serve your sentence under house arrest[0]. Often used by the wealthy to avoid going to jail at all, even for serious "white collar" crimes
Or the fact you pay to stay in "fancy jail"[1]
[0]: https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/process/sentencing/hous...
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pay-to-stay-jails/?wp...
My experience is that this is seldom granted on request barring extenuating circumstances i.e. COVID, jail capacity, etc, and your convictions needs to be strictly non-violent otherwise. That said, at least in California the jails and prisons are very overcrowded leading to many unqualified individuals being offered house arrest after serving short stints in custody.
Wow, it really feels like everything has been productized already.
for far leas damaging crimes is the crucial part.
To be clear: I don’t support those conditions for anyone. When society meets out punishment, it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to terrorize people who are serving out their sentence. But that it happens to people who don’t even deserve it is horrifying.
Indeed, the three aims of punishment are retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence. None of these entail malice, which itself is evil and degrades the malicious person.
Obviously.
> or subject to slave labor in prison...
Why not? We're not talking chattel slavery, but penal labor. The notion that it is somehow categorically wrong to sentence someone to labor as a penalty is absurd.
> theoretically the aim even for those in "worse" prisons should be to have them come out the other side able to function in society better than before, not worse.
Life imprisonment does not have that as a goal for obvious reasons which shows that rehabilitation is for the sake of the offender as such. And are you claiming that punishment makes people worse? It doesn't. It facilitates rehabilitation. Proportionate penalties enable the guilty to acknowledge the gravity of their offense; without acknowledgement, there is no rehabilitation. It allows people to suffer for their guilt. When people cannot suffer for their crimes, you actually deprive them of means to pay for their evil deeds. One has an objective moral duty toward justice; an injustice left unpaid will derange the psyche of the offender. Repressed guilt is at the root of many strange disorders and behaviors. Like projection and scapegoating.
Besides, rehabilitation is only one component of punishment. The other two are retribution and deterrence.
Because it creates a financial incentive to put people in prison.
Nobody should be profiting from prison labor and companies frequently do. Judges can own stock in companies that utilize prison labor, increasing sentences. It's ongoing and clearly an outrage to true justice.
That's why.
> Why not? We're not talking chattel slavery, but penal labor. The notion that it is somehow categorically wrong to sentence someone to labor as a penalty is absurd.
This is a false dichotomy. Penal labor should be paid.
Like if our goal is to actually build a better society, prison shouldn't be a lot worse than loss of autonomy. If you are going to release someone, do you want them to be in a worse state when you do that than when you took away their autonomy?
Of course we are collectively deranged, so oh well.
If you're leaving during the day, can't you eat then?
The most they would do is put us for a few months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort!
How does that work? Kissinger (as well as lots of other very rich, powerful people with government connections) was one of the victims of the fraud.
But we don't live in an ideal world and as long as the United States justice system has a modus operandi, it should be applied consistently for the sake of fairness and equality. Otherwise it's just a big farce.
Although according to the ACLU [2], prisoners are used in McDonald's supply chain and in restitution centers in Mississippi (which is very different from Holmes' federal case, mind):
> Mississippi is the only state that still uses restitution centers to lock people up for an indefinite period of time while they work for private employers to earn money to pay off court-ordered debts. Hundreds of people a year are sentenced to be confined in Mississippi’s restitution centers, where they are required to stay until they pay off court fees, fines, and restitution. Workers are required to pay for room and board, transportation to their jobs, and medical care costs. They work slaughtering chickens, cutting catfish at processing plants, at Popeyes and McDonald’s franchises, and for auto mechanic shops, furniture companies, and meatpacking plants....
> ... Taylor Farms, North America’s largest supplier of salads and fresh-cut vegetables, paid over $2.2 million to Arizona’s prison industries program for labor contracts to employ incarcerated workers to cut and package fruit and vegetables for the company.371 Taylor Farms supplies some of the nation’s biggest fast food and grocery chains, including Chipotle, Costco, Kroger, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Ralphs, Safeway, Subway, Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods Market.
That's a hell of a list though. Costco, Kroger, Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods basically covers every consumer in the country
[1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/22/instagram-...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/2022...
> The appeal automatically delays her reporting date, and she will now remain out of prison until a court of appeals rules on her request.
15% APR on all time served. If you tie your sentence up in court for 2 years you owe the general public an extra 33% jail time.
As a (former) lawyer my gut tells me this might be ruled unconstitutional, on account of due process rights and the presumption of innocence. But it's an interesting idea, and one I've never heard before.
More like, if you're rich you can afford to keep filing appeals (for a while). But it's no secret that the US justice system favors the wealthy.
Frankly, the answer to how that works is less rich and more being highly adept at utilizing various levels of privilege to her advantage in almost calculating fashion.
> and more being highly adept at utilizing various levels of privilege to her advantage in almost calculating fashion.
She is a sociopath. We're discussing why she is behaving as she is. You've got cause and effect backward or you're trying to... I don't really know.
It may not last for long, and in any case will merely delay the day she gets out. Her co-conspirator went the same route, was denied, and has started his sentence.
But ya, it sure feels like 'leniency for thee and not for me'
At least around here, it seems to happen a lot to violent offenders who aren't rich. There was a guy a few months ago who committed an armed robbery. Reached a plea to get it turned into an attempted robbery. He simply stopped showing up to court dates (both for the armed robbery and a separate theft case) and was out on his own for months, until he stabbed an innocent woman to death[1]. Just a few weeks ago one of the guys who shot a Washington Commanders player absconded, and it doesn't seem like anyone cares.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/04/ivy-city-... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/05/commander...
> [S]he is appealing [Judge] Davila’s ruling that she remain in custody while it is determined whether she should get a new trial... The appeal automatically delays her reporting date, and she will now remain out of prison until a court of appeals rules on her request.
weird way to spell "scam artist"
Any lawyers that can advise on what’s going on here?
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.32...
So, no she is not a fugitive an no-one is going to arrest her, irrespective of her wealth. Nothing to see here...
edit: see my great-grandchild comment to gain a bit more info I to what I was thinking, here.
It also keeps us separated politically.
I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but I think this is a very thorough and very effective ongoing response to Occupy Wall Street. That movement has been handily forked into the completely pointless: Trump vs Mexicans, Bernie vs Billionaires, and Democrats vs Nazis
if she was rich that would not have happened.
if she was white that would not have happened.
poor people pay for being poor every day of their lives in dozens of ways.
minorities pay for being minorities every day of their lives in dozens of ways.
I could have separated wealth from race, yes, and I should have.
This is probably true. More specifically if the police knew she was rich.
>if she was white that would not have happened.
I dunno, I watch a lot of videos where cops behave badly, so much so I had to stop watching them because it was affecting my mood. There's plenty of white people who get treated like crap. It happens to everybody because it's not about race, it's about class. Here's a white guy getting tazed because he didn't comply fast enough. He didn't comply fast enough because he was deaf.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUYWJJkipPQ
It's not about race, it's about class.
If a poor person did this, they’d be a fugitive.
Lots of people serve less time than this in the US for literal murder.
Remember, she was convicted only of wire-fraud against her investors - the same investors that did very little due diligence before they handed her billions of dollars.
I don't think this is a fair description and it's loaded to support your point of view. C.f. wikipedia:
> Davila recommended she be incarcerated at Federal Prison Camp, Bryan, in Texas, a minimum security facility with limited or no perimeter fencing. "No one wants to get kicked out because compared to other places in the prison system, this place is heaven. If you have to go it's a good place to go," said a criminal defense lawyer.
And the reason you get sent to minimum security prison is because you're not seen as a flight risk or as likely to be violent -- a measure she meets.
No one here said they should. It was just pointed out that a Federal prison camp isn't a great match for "hard time", which carries the connotation of a particularly difficult penal institution. It seems a bit loaded.
Rich people don't face consequences like that. They just tighten their purse strings. It hits the people they employ.
Plus all of that investment money would otherwise have gone to a real business and employed tens of thousands of real people for decades.
Her fraudulent enterprise robbed real opportunity from real people and real businesses.
Edit: Also, it's not just about eagerness to see her serve prison time. She committed serious crimes and has been given multiple opportunities to express remorse for what she has done. At each opportunity she has instead chosen to double down on her innocence. This is why we're all eager to see her serve the maximum length and quality of time.
Operating a straight up fraud is _just_ stealing from people.
If you worked for a business that failed, that's not going to prevent you from getting your next job. There's no harm to you personally for having worked there. On the other hand if you worked somewhere that perpetrated a fraud, then that will actively harm your future.
Also, failed businesses that attract VC money don't usually fizzle out...their IP and customer lists get acquired at a discount.
You're comparing apples to oranges here. I'd like to see her do time, just as anyone else who isn't megawealthy would in this same situation
Rules for thee, but not for me.
The public sentiment is based on that, not what subset of behaviors were in her conviction.
Bloodthirsty was a poetic justice descriptor you chose, and it does seem to describe popular sentiment.
I don't know what you know about her but did much more than that and is probably getting away with it.
But special treatment for rich criminals? who got their wealth through the very same crime? Nah.
Do rich men also historically get similar treatment? Or is gender also playing a role?
I'm sorry, but is this a serious question? Yes, of course rich men get similar treatment. Elizabeth is not being treated with kid gloves because she's a woman, it's because she's an upper-class white-collar criminal who (at least at one point in time) had connections. This is the definition of privilege.
To offer a case in point: Andy Fastow, one of the principal architects of the Enron fraud, who wiped out the retirement savings of tens of thousands of Enron employees and did only 5 years in a minimum-security prison camp as a result.
How long after Andy Fastow's sentencing did he get to remain free?
She's the daughter of Enron's VP, not just a random person who got rich from fraud.
But to the point about rich men: SBF is still in home arrest, and Elisabeth did nothing compared to the tens of billions of dollars of fraud concentrating in SBF's hands. It will be interesting to see what he gets.
True, but I would argue that her criminal activity was so obviously heinous that she was prosecuted and sentenced in this manner _in spite of_ her being a woman.
The reason SBF is in home arrest is because of his massive political campaign contributions and the fact that the general public doesn't have a clue enough about crypto to hold him to public account.
I don't really hear a lot of hate for rich people for existing. They do tend to get more scrutiny, because (in the US, at least), wealth is power and the powerful have a greater ability to do harm.
I do hear a lot of hate for rich people who use their wealth to harm non-rich people. That seems fair.