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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated
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To: LindyBill who wrote (90987)12/16/2004 7:00:18 PM
From: LindyBill  Read Replies (1) of 793822
 
I have been following this and agree.

Free Billy Hurwitz
Ideoblog
By Larry Ribstein on Regulation

Another travesty of the sentencing system is shaping up in the case of Billy Hurwitz. This case is shades of the infamous Jamie Olis case I've written about, most recently here.

Billy is a former GMU law student and, more importantly, a pain doctor. He was the last resort for many patients in excrutiating pain -- the only doctor who was willing to push the limits of our outmoded attitudes toward pain to give them some relief. Whatever else he may have been or done, Billy was committed to his patients.

The federal drug authorities have been after Billy for years, and yesterday finally got him. I am told that the judge is likely to rigorously apply the federal sentencing guidelines, despite the recent criticism and legal challenges to those guidelines. So, like a rapist or murderer, Billy will go to jail for the rest of his life.

I haven't watched this particular trial closely enough to be able to second guess the specific charges and the verdict. But whatever he did wasn't wrong enough to justify the sentence he's likely to get under the guidelines.

Like other issues under the sentencing guidelines, this is all about Congress using the criminal laws to look like it's "doing something" about a problem -- corporate crime, drugs. The experiment with "fairer" sentencing has run up against the politics of criminal justice. We need to take a long hard look at those guidelines.
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