Bush's Justice

A New York Times masthead editorial from today analyzes how and why the Justice Department (under the Bush administration) has decided not to prosecute over 50 large corporations on serious charges over the last three years, instead opting to enter into “deferred prosecution agreements.” This is where “companies are allowed to pay fines and hire monitors to watch over them.”

Part of this story was revealed back in January to be a shocking abuse of government power. According to the Washington Post back then, “federal prosecutors are steering no-bid contract to former government officials who earn millions of dollars by monitoring companies accused of cheating investors and other schemes.” In short, former Bush administration officials (John Ashcroft) are receiving million-dollar contracts, noncompetitively, to watch over these corporations.

The NY Times editorial sums it up best (with emphasis added):

Defenders say these deals save the government time and the expense of going to trial and avoid doing unnecessary harm to corporations and their employees. The cost to the public and the rule of law is too high.

If corporations believe that they can negotiate their way out of a prosecution, the deterrent effect of the criminal law will inevitably be weakened.

Yep, that’s exactly right.

-- Dylan Blaylock

Comments

[Charles Heckman]

I blew the whistle on a $20,000 bribe offer for me to withdraw from a federal civil service selection for the U.S. Forest Service research scientist in Alaska. As a Vietnam War veteran, I was blocking the list for a much less qualified non-veteran the agency had pre-selected. Since then I have been blacklisted for all employment in the United States. During my administrative appeals, I obtained recorded testimony of perjury, and I also obtained copies of files that had been altered by the Department of the Interior before submission to the Merit System Protection Board, which did nothing about any of these felonies because it alleges it has no jurisdiction to do so. Therefore, for attempted grand larceny (the $20,000 was to be misappropriated from funds for equipment purchases), bribery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and fraud in the selections, one agency scapegoat received a one-week suspension without pay, and another received a letter of reprimand.
Recently I heard that a prosecuting attorney was asking a 25-year to life sentence for an offender for eating a 52 cent donut in a supermarket and not paying for it. He had other convictions for minor offenses, and under the three strikes law, he would receive a minimum of 25 years for a third offense.
Do we have evenhanded justice in the United States, or are some people just above the law?