You, Me, Paris and SCOOTER, Part 2 – The Legal Blowback – UPDATED

Actions have consequences. And for the last 24 plus hours, defense attorneys and sentencing mavens have been opining mightily on what the legal consequences—meaning, the unintended ones—are going to result from Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence.

For instance, the ever-smart and usually correct Doug Berman of Sentencing, Law and Policy had this to say:

If any prison time for Libby is excessive and inappropriate, what about. ..some other notable federal sentences like…

* the 33-month federal prison sentence for nearly identical crimes for decorated military veteran Victor Rita (basics here)?

* the 60-month federal prison sentence for minor drug sales for decorated military veteran Patrick Lett (basics here)?

* the 11- and 12-year federal prison sentences for bad mistakes made while protecting our border for Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean ( basics here)?
* the 55-year federal prison sentence for minor drug sales for Weldon Angelos (basics here)?

or some notable state sentences like…

* the 27-month state prison sentence for providing alcohol at their son’s teenage birthday party for two parents ?
* the 10-year state prison sentence for consensual oral sex between teenager for Genarlow Wilson ?
* the 200-year state prison sentence for downloading child porn for Morton Berger (basics here)?

Critically, my chief goal in this post is not to assert that all the persons should be able to escape all punishment. Indeed, as President Bush stressed in his commutation statement, Libby still has not (yet) escaped all punishment. Rather, I wish primarily to urge anyone and everyone defending President Bush’s sentencing determination in the Libby case to explain why all these less prominent defendants — most of whom are now locked in a cell while Libby now makes plans for the paid lecture circuit — don’t also merit some executive sympathy.

In this morning’s New York Times, Adam Liptak has a pretty good rundown on what a lot of people are thinking. Here’s the opening:

In commuting I. Lewis Libby Jr.’s 30-month prison sentence on Monday, President Bush drew on the same array of arguments about the federal sentencing system often made by defense lawyers — and routinely and strenuously opposed by his own Justice Department.

Critics of the system have a long list of complaints. Sentences, they say, are too harsh. Judges are allowed to take account of facts not proven to the jury. The defendant’s positive contributions are ignored, as is the collateral damage that imprisonment causes the families involved.

On Monday, Mr. Bush made use of every element of that critique in a detailed statement setting out his reasons for commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence — handing an unexpected gift to defense lawyers around the country, who scrambled to make use of the president’s arguments in their own cases. ….

There’s a lot more, but this is the trend. Blowback.

UPDATE: This morning’s LA Times has their own article on the comparative justice issue. This puppy, I am coming to believe, ain’t going way. Here’s a link to whole the Times piece with the article’s opening pasted below:

WASHINGTON — In commuting the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, President Bush said that the former vice presidential aide had suffered enough and that the 30-month prison term ordered up by a federal judge was “excessive.”

But records show that the Justice Department under the Bush administration frequently has sought sentences that are as long, or longer, in cases similar to Libby’s. Three-fourths of the 198 defendants sentenced in federal court last year for obstruction of justice — one of four crimes Libby was found guilty of in March — got some prison time. According to federal data, the average sentence defendants received for that charge alone was 70 months…..