In school we're taught that obeying laws, paying taxes, accepting personal responsibility for our actions, and every other aspect of citizenship exist in the same measure for everybody. That's fair, equal, and right until we start seeing that, as in Orwell's Animal Farm, some people are more equal than others.
Those people are rich, powerful, and politically connected. They use their money, power, and influence to buy not just goods and services, but to send armies of lobbyists to buy favorable tax laws and loopholes and insert language in legislation that favors them or their business. They buy ad time to present their polluting corporation as a friend of the environment with plenty of trees, blue skies and singing birds to paint a rosy picture. They buy politicians to do their bidding and ensure their electoral success through dark money groups that mercilessly lie and attack any opponent.
Increasingly, they're buying the last remaining place where people expect fairness and equality: our judicial system.
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They're not just buying judges who stand for election the same way they buy up politicians. That's old news. They're also not just seeing to it that ideologues who are corporation-friendly get appointed to lifetime positions on the federal bench, appeals courts, or Supreme Court. Old news, too, although the extremism of their judicial puppets is escalating.
No, today, money is becoming a major factor when they face the ordinary law and order type of justice after a crime is committed.
It's obvious that the rich can afford the best lawyers, a plethora of expert witnesses, and a legal strategy that often gets them off the hook for crimes they commit. They fare much better in our court system than the truly innocent who rely on a small number of overworked and underpaid public defenders. The innocent often plead guilty to a crime they didn't commit in hopes of a reduced sentence because a full trial with a bad lawyer might lead to a more brutal outcome.
We recently saw the son of a massively wealthy family be excused for killing people because the judge diagnosed him with "Affluenza". It seems that being so rich that you believe you're above the law actually makes you above the law. We're shocked, but shouldn't be surprised since justice is becoming no longer blind when it comes to the monied elite.
I'm upset about this.
After three years of pre-trial litigation that went all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court — twice — a Racine County billionaire who had been facing felony charges he sexually assaulted a girl pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors.
...
Samuel Curtis "Curt" Johnson III, was charged in 2011 with indecently touching a girl when she was between ages 12 and 15. Johnson, 59, is an heir to the S.C. Johnson household products company fortune.
In a court hearing Friday, Johnson agreed to plead guilty to fourth-degree sexual assault and disorderly conduct.
That's right, felony sexual abuse of a child plea bargained down to a misdemeanor.
How did that happen?
This billionaire inheritance baby's lawyers have pounded pre-trial litigation, the prosecutors, and the victim into submission over the past 3 years. They've even gone to the State Supreme Court twice.
Although they've refused to hand over Johnsons own private counseling records, they've demanded that the victim turn over records of her private counseling sessions with the excuse that there might be something in those records that might help Johnsons defense. They argued that she shouldn't be allowed to testify without those records. She refused to release the records (who wouldn't) and today, at age 17, doesn't want to testify in the case either (she and her family have moved out of state).
It's bad enough to suffer a sexual assault if you're an adult, much less a child. It's even harder to live with the memories as well as the emotional pain that all victims feel. Most sexual assaults aren't even reported (this one wasn't) because victims know all too well how they're treated by the criminal justice system. Those who do report their assault often say they felt victimized twice; once by their assailant and the second time by our judicial system.
For her, it's been more than twice. The legal wrangling to get her counseling records must have been horrific. The very thought of her personal feelings and emotions being open for the view of strangers or to those who would use them against her must have been just as much of an assault as the original. It seems like she has had enough. She doesn't want to testify.
Johnsons lawyers, however, weren't done even after they "won" with the sweet plea deal. They rejected the prosecutors request for the maximum sentence for those very reduced charges. Why? Because, they argued, maximum sentences should be for repeat offenders and their client had a "clean" record. The judge should just forget that it was a plea deal that turned felonies into misdemeanors.
Sadly, the judge agreed. He'll serve 4 months under Huber (work release), pay a $6,000 fine, and won't have to register as a sex offender. His record will be slightly tainted with 2 misdemeanors.
Who knows if this will be the end. As the time for him to serve his sentence draws near, his lawyers might press for house arrest (or would that be "mansion arrest") instead with electronic monitoring by arguing that this would save the state some money.
What do you think would have happened if this was some regular guy earning an average salary? Could he have managed to pull off a deal like this?
The victim, on the other hand, will live with all the consequences of the assault made worse by 3 years of legal proceedings. Maybe now, after even more injustice has been done, she can heal from the compounded tragedy and move on with her life. We can only hope that the rest of her life will be better than the first part has been.
So if you're rich, your high priced legal team can day and night, year after year to muddy the waters, cause delays, pester and exhaust your victim and the prosecutors. And if you make the victims judicial experience worse than the original crime, they might just throw their hands up and surrender. Taxpayers, of course, get stuck with the bill.
Buying justice. With enough money, you can be above the law.
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