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Banned
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The_jazz, I sincerely cannot grasp why you think the crux of this thread is not political, or that you're comments about me, in either of your posts, are appropriate or accurate:
Background:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/sp...rssnyt&emc=rss
Sentence for Jones Could Be Longer
By JULIET MACUR
Published: January 5, 2008
Despite a plea to the judge for a light sentence, the former Olympic track star Marion Jones may be facing more prison time than she expected for lying about her steroid use and involvement in a check-fraud scheme.
United States District Judge Kenneth M. Karas filed an order Thursday in White Plains asking the prosecution and Jones’s defense team to explain why Jones should not be given two consecutive sentences for her two counts of providing false statements to federal agents. He wrote that consecutive sentences may be possible if they occurred in “separate investigations of unrelated criminal conduct in different jurisdictions.”
Karas said he was not bound by the plea agreement in which prosecutors suggested a maximum of six months in prison for Jones, who is 32 and has two children.
He also said he was not bound by sentencing guidelines.....
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Quote:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/whi...-jones-se.html
January 12, 2008
Marion Jones Sentenced to Six Months
Former Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones received a six-month prison sentence from U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas for her guilty plea to two counts of making false statements, the maximum recommended term under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for the offenses. Jones was interviewed by federal agents in 2003 and again in 2006, the first time about the Balco (Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative) steroids operation and the second time about a check-kiting scheme involving her former boyfriend, sprinter Tim Montgomery. In the Balco case, she denied ever receiving steroids and even filed a defamation suit against Victor Conte, the founder of Balco, for his statements about her use of performance-enhancing drugs; that civil case was eventually dropped, for obvious reasons.
The Sentencing Guidelines range was 0-6 months, and I speculated earlier (here) that she might receive probation or home confinement. The prosecutors did not recommend any particular sentence other than staying within the Guidelines recommendation, <h3>and when Judge Karas floated the possibility of giving her consecutive sentences for each count of conviction or to exceed the recommended sentence, the prosecutors filed a letter (available below) urging the court to give a sentence within the 0-6 months range and not any higher. While in other white collar crime cases prosecutors have taken a more aggressive stance on sentencing, here they urged the court to stay within the Guidelines and gave the impression that a sentence with no incarceration would be acceptable.</h3>
Judge Karas' indication before sentencing that he was considering a longer prison term made it likely he would sentence Jones at the high end of the Guidelines range. In explaining the sentence, the Judge stated that he wanted to send a message to other athletes who do not adhere to the values of "hard work, dedication, teamwork and sportsmanship." In addition, Judge Karas said, "Athletes in society have an elevated status, they entertain, they inspire, and perhaps, most important, they serve as role models." An AP story (here) discusses the sentencing.
After the Supreme Court's decision in Gall granting district courts broader discretion in sentencing, individualized factors now play a greater role in the punishment determination. But, should an athlete's celebrity status be a basis for imposing an increased sentence in order to "send a message" to others? Jones did not plead guilty to using performance-enhancing drugs, although she had now admitted to using them, so the message is not one tied to the underlying crime.....
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Thread title: <h3>Why is Marion Jones going to jail?</h3>
Thread OP:
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Originally Posted by Strange Famous
I understand she loses her medals, but what criminal offence has she committed??
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Originally Posted by Daoust
If perjury means that she lied under oath, then yes, that. Six months was the maximum sentence.
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Originally Posted by host
Because Jones represented our country so well in the 2000 summer olympic games, I'm fairly certain our president will step up, as he did recently, here. She has two young sons at home, and her crimes were certainly less serious than Mr. Libby's were....
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0070702-3.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
July 2, 2007
Statement by the President on Executive Clemency for Lewis Libby
....Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.
I respect the jury's verdict. But
I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.......
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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
host, I always get a chuckle when you try to derail a thread as only you can do. Nice try, though.
SF - I certainly appreciate the sentiment of your statement. In a perfect world, it makes sense. Unfortunately, if it were to come to pass, it would be abused in this world.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by host
Note the date of my post, and the date of this NY Times reporting. I guess the NY Times reporter followed my reaction.
I have now supported my the legitimacy of comparing justice for Marrion Jones with 'justice" for the president's perjurer.
I would appreciate it if posters who logged what amount to "drive-by sinped) criticism, seemingly more aimed at me, and my "rep" than as rebuttals of what I actually posted, would drive back around to this thread, pull into a space, shut of the motor, or at least put the shift selector in the "P" position, and actually post an opinion about what I posted, instead of a "quickie", about me. Fair enough?
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/sp...ef=todayspaper
Blinded and Broken by Ambition
By HARVEY ARATON
Published: January 12, 2008
White Plains
... When she finally admitted to government investigators that she had used performance-enhancing drugs before and after her five-medal haul at the 2000 Summer Olympics, Jones told them she believed she had been using flaxseed oil given to her by her former coach, Trevor Graham. The judge said he found it “a very difficult thing to believe” that Jones, as a world-class athlete, would not have recognized the dramatic effects on her body and her results as they occurred.
“I am troubled, quite frankly, by that statement,” Karas said, and who objectively could blame him? He soon after announced the six-month sentence based on Jones’s guilty plea to two counts of perjury, to be followed by two years of probation, with an appropriate mix of sadness and resolve.
Yes, he might have accepted the assertion by one of Jones’s attorneys, F. Hill Allen, that Jones had made a courageous, legacy-unraveling admission, had already been “pilloried, battered and dragged through the public square.” <h2>No, the sanctimonious call for jail time doesn’t come easily when the government can so blithely spring one of its own (see President Bush’s commuting of Scooter Libby’s 30-month sentence for four counts of perjury in the Valerie Plame case).</h2>....
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In 2004, GW Bush appointed Kenneth Karas to the federal bench. Patrick J. Fitzgerald seems a brighter, more capable choice for the appointment to the bench that was awarded to Karas.
You don't see hypocrisy, you aren't disgusted by the lack of equal justice, under the law....but you bothered to drive-by to log here, that "host" is posting OT, in your opinions, but, in a one sentence, toss the rolled up newspaper out the window and onto the porch kinda delivery, you really couldn't say why, host was the problem with the discussion here.
He just was....right? |
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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
.....And host, as a close follower of track and field, I didn't "drive-by" your post. I actually read it. You just chose to respond take one sentence in the NYT article and post about it. I'll discuss politics in the appropriate place, but don't try to derail one of the few places that I actually get to talk about track here. All you "proved" was that you and the reporter want to grind the same axe.
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The_Jazz, the "drive-by", I refer to, is the practice of posting a line or two, attempting to discredit the poster, without actually responding to the argument and it's support.
We have a former celebrity, a US triple gold medal Olympic champion. She is a first offender, pleading guilty to a charge of lying to investigators, before a federal judge appointed by president Bush, and her sentencing takes place six months after Bush commuted, in advance of any incarceration, the entire prison sentence of Lewis Libby, a former presidential advisor and COS of the VP, who did not plead guilty to any of 5 counts of perjury before a federal grand jury in a criminal investigation, and went to trial and was found guilty by a jury of four of the perjury counts.
The former Olympic champion's sentencing judge, is on record of going out of his way to sentence this first offender who pled guilty of a non-violent crime, to prison time, contrary to expressed sentiments of the prosecutors in the case. Marion Jones pled guilty, she did not put prosecutors and the court through the time and resources expending effort of a criminal jury trial, as Lewis Libby had.
Libby's prosecutors communicated this, in a memo to the trial judge:
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18868887/
By Joel Seidman
Producer
NBC News
updated 4:51 p.m. ET, Fri., May. 25, 2007
WASHINGTON - Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, in a sentencing memo, has recommended that former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.
Libby was convicted in March of four of five felony counts against him. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 5th before U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton
Falsehoods were central
Judge Walton is not compelled to follow federal sentencing guidelines and could impose either a stronger or weaker sentence on Libby.
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Libby was sentenced, a short time later, to 30 months in prison.
A month later, before Libby reported to prison to serve even a day, the president commuted his entire sentence and said:
Quote:
.....In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.
I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.....
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Former Olympic star, Marion Jone's prison sentence, meted out by a judge appointed by the very same president who commuted recently the entire prison sentence of the most recent, prior, high profile defendant, to be sentenced on a similar criminal conviction, lying in a federal criminal investigation, is a relevant comparison of Jone's experience in the criminal justice system, vs. Lewis Libby's.
It is reasonable to make that comparison on this thread, and to highlight the different reactions to the two offenders, and the different "justice" they have received. The accused who pled guilty is going to prison, contrary to her prosecutors' sentencing memo to the judge, <h3>and the accused who resisted the process, forcing a lengthy trial before he was convicted, and who was sentenced exactly in accordance with the prosecution's sentencing memo to the judge, later had the good fortune to have the president of the United States decide that Libby's prison sentence was "excessive", to the point that it was just to wipe it completely away.</h3>
I don't believe that it is unreasonable given the above comparison, to post here as if the injustice done to Marion Jones, compared to Mr. Libby, is obvious, since I immediately thought that it was.
I've already commented on my reaction to how you have chosen to respond to my posts in this thread. |