Maybe her first plea required being a Rat? What if she said, "I can't do that. I would rather face the consequences." If this is anything like NCAA bball sting, they surely want to "buy" her testimony against others.
Interesting to think about who the DA considers the biggest fish, is it the star of full house ( who resolves the problem publicly and makes careers, or the kingpin of the operation. And how do they balance that if there no guiding principles. Which I have no idea about. Are there guiding principles regarding plea bargaining to "testify" or do they pretty much just wing it.
So there is a big thing here that the tweet gets wrong. Its not a deal a DA made, its a deal the US Attorny's office made. That's a big difference. US Attorny's office doesn't make deals lightly and its usually their best deal. This isn't some local DA.
Why do feds make deals, especially in stings involving multiple people in RICO, mail fraud, honest-services, etc charges?
The US Attorney's office has something like a 90-95% conviction rate with trials. They don't file charges unless they have mountains of evidence. They basically hardly ever lose. When they offer a deal, they are trying to save everybody time, money, and effort. Since they are so good at their jobs and don't file charges unless they will likely convict, their offers are not as generous as perhaps a local DA. Why do they offer deals in the first place? To get more evidence against somebody else in exchange, to save everybody the hassle of a court trial, so save limited resources time and money from going to trial, to reduce the burden on an overburdened court system...any number of reasons, I suppose. When I say they don't make deals lightly, what I should have said: they make deals, but they are usually not as generous because they don't have to be. Additionally, with federal laws, the dollar amounts matter. She had one of the bigger amounts of money, which cranks up the potential punishment on conviction.
thx for insight. If this is the case, which I find highly likely in such fed operations, then should we just write her off as being dumb to not take the plea, or would many also refuse to cooperate? I'm not asking to argue with you in anyway. I'm not as knowledgeable as you on this, clearly. I just find it odd that E! News would assume she was stupidly trying to call their "bluff," in light of you mentioning their conviction rate. Also, I hate the thought that she simply has no extra information, and so she chose not to lie to give them what they want, to make their case stronger against someone else. ugh, if that's a possibility. btw: I didn't misinterpret the tweet as referring to a local DA. I didn't even notice a possible miscommunication since this is clearly a federal case.
This was my job for over 5 years. RICO is an incredibly strong law and is worded in such away that it can be used for almost any enterprise. I personally question the Constitutionality of it but that is besides the point. The whole purpose of getting lower level people is to flip them to testify against the person running the operation. Usually we would offer half of what a defendant would get at trial and most the time it would work. When you start talking about actual jail time, low level people flip. We would never knowingly have someone lie and make up testimony. However the reality is sometimes it is hard to know. When people are trying to save themselves from prison, there is a motivation to tell us what we want to hear. Couple that with interrogations where the defendant can piece together what we want to hear, and what the allegations are; it is possible to lie or try to lie. There is a fine line between being zealous as a prosecutor and influencing testimony. In my experience it is obvious when someone has been coached. I heard from some of the older Prosecutors that cartels/mafia and criminal syndicate cases often had lower level defendants try to embellish or lie in an effort to get a plea deal The recent trial involving mafia boss Joey Merlino had two witnesses, that took deals to testify, that in my professional opinion lied about their importance in illegal activities and their relationship with Merlino to avoid a lengthy sentence. Also someone on the board said that we have a 90% rate of conviction because we are so good. There are good prosecutors for sure, but we also get to decide what cases we want to go to trial. We don’t want to lose, so we take slam dunk cases to trial. Also the rulings on pre trial issues concerning evidence and discovery issues usually go our way.
Basing the money on the dollar amount just seems weird. I guess it is just opinion, but it seems worse to fake your SAT score (Huffman) then pretend you are on crew. The fact that one paid 15k and the other 500k doesn't seem to jive with the seriousness of the cheating. The fact that one got a better financial deal doesn't seem like it should be the difference maker in sentencing. I get it if you are using the dollars to calculate losses: swindling 15k vs 500k. But, in this scenario it just seems an odd yardstick.
Felicity Huffman sentenced to two weeks in prison over college admissions scandal The actor was also fined $30,000 and will have to complete 250 hours of community service.
This family is so utterly Not Guilty... #PerjuryTrap #GeneralFlynn #BlackHat #Comey https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/othe...d-of-her-decision-to-plead-guilty/ar-BB14BQ1B