Gertner is a former federal judge who has spent her career since criticizing American sentencing law as overly punitive. She teaches a class on mass incarceration and sentencing and routinely writes about it
My point is that she supports more lenient sentences in general and is writing from that perspective. She provides this boilerplate caveat whenever she writes about an individual sentencing. This isn’t just someone making exceptions for Trump.
This is someone making an explicit exception for Trump: "But the bottom line is this: The factors pointing to imprisonment are outweighed by Mr. Trump’s unique position."
“Trump no doubt will be treated …less harshly…than other criminal defs in our extraordinarily punitive criminal legal system. But we shouldn’t equalize the treatment of defs by ramping up everyone’s punishment. Our criminal legal system is far too retributive and leans too heavily on imprisonment”
..as almost every other legal analyst out there, yes.
That's usually the case.
BUT, in Trump's case , as many also point out, his lack of remorse and repeated violations, recidivism risk ,
might be the exact reason to put him behind bars.
In other words,him running his mouth will again ruin him.
How does that change the fact that she specifically argued for special treatment based on who he is, on top of not knowing the factual basis for his sentencing?
Also even taking that piece of her argument on its own terms "ramping up" is nonsense—and for it not to be nonsense, she would have to know the facts that she says she doesn't know
I agree this is problematic. The orig post was about her not knowing enough to comment on his sentence, which is silly, and did not include this part or link to the piece. It seems clear that she thinks Trump was rightly convicted but the poss of him becoming president while in jail is a factor
She radically diminished the merit of her general argument about prison time by highlighting the need for one specific exception on the basis of political motives.
