Friday, September 02, 2011

TPM: Former Doolittle staffer & Abramoff lobbyist Kevin Ring 'Not Entitled' To Leniency

Based on roughly 30 seconds of deep thought, I disagree with the feds on this.
(Recommendation: read & decide for yourself)
"Federal prosecutors maintained in a filing on Thursday that Jack Abramoff crony Kevin Ring should face 17 to 22 years in jail because he is "is not entitled to the benefits, or leniency, enjoyed by his co-conspirators who stood in a very different position in 2005 to 2008 than he does in 2011."

Ring's lawyers had argued that the tough sentence the Justice Department has sought against him -- which exceeds the time served by all 20 other defendants in the conspiracy combined -- was a form of retaliation for his decision to go to trial and not plead guilty like many of his co-conspirators.
...
in a filing Thursday, federal prosecutors ... [disagreed, saying Ring's] "insupportable" argument was essentially that it is "retaliation" if the government "ever seeks a higher sentence than the sentence to which it agreed for any of his co-conspirators." ..."
Some of the comments make sense.

2 comments:

Don Pelton said...

Anna:

Do you mean that you disagree with the harsh sentence?

Anna Haynes said...

Yes, with the proviso that it's not a well informed opinion; there may be aspects of this case that I'm not aware of.