Picked up @people magazine to read on a plane with Lori Loughlin and the #admissionsscandal on the cover. Turned out to be a primer on #pleabargaining. Here is a thread on The Trial Penalty: Celebrity Edition
First, the admissions scandal is (sort of) old news. The cover story is sparked by new charges brought by the prosecutor. Not new facts. The story remains pretty much the same. But the prosecutor has filed new charges based on the same conduct to exert pressure on the defendants
This, of course, is a common tactic to encourage defendants to change course when they exercise their right to trial. It's made possible by the fact that there are LOTS of crimes in the statute books.
Second, the story includes a box listing the sentences of all the parents who have accepted guilt. Those sentences range from a few days to a few months, and are a huge departure from what Loughlin is facing after trial.
According to legal experts that @people quoted, although Loughlin is facing 45 years, the *real* max is more like 20. That's still quite the differential. Felicity Huffman served 11 days. If Loughlin gets 20 years (or anything close), it will be b/c she decided to go to trial
Side note: Martha Stewart, in an act of pure shade, had this to say about Huffman's prison look: insideedition.com/martha-stewart…
It would be hard to say that paying 500K to pretend your daughter is on the crew team is *that* much worse than paying $15K to get someone to change your kid's answers on a standardized test. (Although, to be clear, both are wrong and -- this is a legal term -- bonkers)
Speaking of which, what does account for the different sentences and fines among those who did plead guilty? Is it simply the amount of $ involved? The level of penance expressed?
Third, in another box, @people asks about Loughlin and her husband, "Could Their Daughters Face Charges?" A former federal prosecutor offers the following quote: "By not pleading guilty, Lori and [husband] are exposing their children to being charged."
Here, the readers of @people are learning that children can be used as bargaining chips in plea bargaining. This was affirmed recently by a panel of the 9th Cir. in U.S. v. Seng Cheng Yong
In Yong, the court found that even in a multi-defendant case that was later found to rest on police misconduct, it wasn't coercive for the prosecutor to offer leniency to a child to induce the parent to plead guilty.
Add kids to the list of bargaining chips, which now includes ... well, everything.
Obviously, Loughlin has it better than most defendants! This thread is meant to explain how this one case demonstrates so many facets of #pleabargaining and the trial penalty. But for a full read on the trial penalty, check out @NACDL report on the topic: nacdl.org/Document/Trial…
