Always interesting to see which convicted felons get a chance to explain themselves to a sympathetic NYT writer and which ones don’t.
I understand why it is what it is, but I don’t think killing 1 person with a knife is necessarily worse than bankrupting 1000s (or more ; the fallout of financial scammers is hard to measure). I think life in prison definitely should be on the table, in the same place with the sexual deviants and murderers. I wouldn’t find it that weird to give someone like Madoff 1000 life sentences and some poor sap who got in a fight and killed someone by accident but the agressor was white and rich, getting a few years. I guess here in the EU it is the latter but not the former and in the US the reverse. I prefer the EU stance, but in an ideal world, financial crimes affecting enough people should be treated as like murder, not just a slap on the wrist.
Stabbing someone in an alley for a hit of fentanyl doesn't really draw the clicks. News is a business.
Oddly enough, the end result of this preference will -probably- be increased public "justice."