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from the don't-sleep-during-your-court-appearance dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A call-center scammer has lost his appeal to overturn a $9m fine – after a court pointed out the crook had specifically waived the right to appeal when he pleaded guilty.
Viraj Patel was part of a large India-based criminal enterprise that conned tens of thousands of Americans out of hundreds of millions of dollars: the swindlers would cold-call citizens and pose as US government officials demanding payment for unpaid taxes.
The unlucky victims were threatened with fines, arrests, or deportation if they didn't cough up: one 85-year-old woman ended up paying the fraudsters $12,300 after she was threatened with a stretch behind bars for phony tax violations. More than 60 suspect con men were charged [PDF] with conspiracy to commit identity theft, false impersonation of an officer of the United States, wire fraud, and money laundering.
In 2018, Patel, then a 33-year-old loser living in California, reached a deal with prosecutors: in exchange for pleading guilty and avoiding a lengthy trial, he would spend up to 165 months, or about 14 years, in the clink followed by three years of supervised release, plus receive a court order kicking him out of America when his punishment is over – and, to top it all off, an $8.97m fine.
He admitted his crimes, specifically, one count of money laundering – since he is based the US, his job in the caper was to launder roughly $4m to $9m of victims' cash – and was sentenced.
But, it turns out that he wasn't listening very carefully to either his lawyers or the federal district judge who sentenced him in Texas, because Patel was seemingly convinced he was only going to have to pay $250,000. When he realized the real fine was actually $9m, he tried to undo his guilty plea, and appealed to the Fifth Circuit claiming a miscarriage of justice.
"He contends that his guilty plea was unknowing and involuntary because the district court did not advise him of its authority to order restitution," the appeals court notes in its judgment [PDF] earlier this week.
And, amazingly, Patel is right – in part at least. At his rearraignment, the Houston court "did not advise Patel of its authority to order restitution," the appeal judges ruled. Patel had picked up that the district court was only allowed to fine him a maximum of $250,000 – and seemed happy to take the hit.
As a man who clearly placed money above everything else, after learning that he'd only face a $250,000 fine when he had conned people out of millions, the crook stopped paying attention. And so he didn't notice when both his own lawyers and the court subsequently informed him that the real amount he would be on the hook for – thanks to the court's ability to force repayment of money stolen from others – was going to be much higher.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21 2019, @01:38AM (1 child)
They do. When entering a guilty plea, the judge will ask the defendant to confirm the minimal factual basis of the crime required to commit the crimes. Plead no contest and the prosecutor will present the facts and the defendant won't rebut them, so the judge will find against the defendant. Either way, that's your trial. Or are you insisting that people get dragged in to form a jury to spend 30 seconds at a time to hear the defendant recite the factual basis, get together to vote, and then find against them?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Saturday September 21 2019, @04:00AM
The issues with plea bargains are many and varied. If someone chooses to plead guilty, that's one thing. There's a hearing and that's that. However, criminal defendants (remember that whole innocent until proven guilty bit? Hah!) are usually smacked around pretty hard long before any trial may come up. As such, they are often forced by prosecutors to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit, just to avoid having their lives ruined even if they are acquitted at trial.
Forcing a guilty plea through overcharging, destroying lives with cash bail, threats of draconian sentences often have innocent people pleading guilty. This is unconscionable and wrong. Not just because the innocent and guilty alike are abused by the system *before* their case is adjudicated, but because innocent people are being tarred with convictions and the guilty (sometimes for really serious crimes) receive sentences that don't comport with their offense.
Disallowing plea bargains would force prosecutors to try only the cases they believe they can win. There are other issues with that too, but we'll leave that alone for now.
I'm going to assume that you misunderstood (rather than trolling or being deliberately obtuse) me. When someone pleads guilty, there is no trial. Just a hearing and no jury is required. The issue comes when prosecutors use their immense discretion and power to force guilty pleas. That's what should be disallowed, IMHO.
Again, assuming you're not being disingenuous and are just ignorant of the issue, here's a few places to get you started understanding the issues:
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/devils-bargain-how-plea-agreements-never-contemplated-framers-undermine-justice [cato.org]
https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/the-rise-of-plea-bargains-and-fall-of-the-right-to-trial/ [acslaw.org]
https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/plea-bargains-in-depth.html [findlaw.com]
https://www.nacdl.org/Document/TrialPenalty [nacdl.org]
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-problem-with-pleas/ [pbs.org]
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocence-is-irrelevant/534171/ [theatlantic.com]
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/why-guilty-defendants-sometimes-plead-to-crimes-they-never-committed.html [slate.com]
There's a bit from here [nacdl.org] that sums a number of the issues nicely:
Given that you seem to not understand how our "justice" system doesn't work, I hope you have enough money to hire good lawyers if/when you intersect with it.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr