Top Enron Fraudster Will Spend Less Time In Prison Than A Father Who Sold His Own Pain Pills

[UrbScotty]

John Horner had no record of drug-dealing when he was sentenced to a 25-year mandatory minimum prison term for selling some of his own pain pills to an undercover informant who befriended him and told him he could not afford both his rent and his prescription medication. Horner, a fast-food restaurant worker and a father, had been prescribed the pain medication because of an injury in which he lost an eye, according to a BBC report.

If, as expected, he serves all 25 years, Horner will be 72 when he is released, and he will have spent more time in prison than the former Enron CEO who was convicted in one of the largest corporate fraud schemes in modern history. Last week, the Department of Justice said it is considering a deal to shorten Jeffrey Skilling’s sentence. But even if he serves every year, Skilling will still have fared better than Horner with a sentence of 24 years.

Horner’s punishment is, as Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic writes, a “heartbreaking drug sentence of staggering idiocy” and arguably a case of entrapment by police. But setting that aside, it’s not just our draconian drug laws that lead to such perverse sentencing. Even in 2006, when Skilling was first sentenced, his legal defense was deemed one of the most expensive in history at $65 million, and in the years since has taken his case to the Supreme Court and back on appeal after appeal. Horner, on the other hand, had a court-appointed public defender and was persuaded to forgo trial entirely in favor of a plea deal. He was told he could mitigate his sentence by serving as an informant. But because Horner is not a professional drug dealer and has no connections to the drug trade, he couldn’t make any prosecutable cases against others. As a consequence, he will serve more time than kingpins who take down their friends in exchange for freedom. And why was Horner snagged in the first place? Because another guy trying to reduce his sentence had to implicate somebody else to shorten his own sentence in Florida’s perverse informant system.

This is the vicious cycle of harsh sentencing laws, snitching, and overburdened public defenders that ensnares low-level offenders with sentences intended for kingpins. Clarence Aaron is serving a triple life sentence for introducing two drug dealers to one another at a profit of $1,500. Fellow defendants who snitched on him received seven years, 12 years. Rachel Hoffman lost her life in a sting operation she participated in to reduce her five-year sentence for possession of marijuana and ecstasy.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/10/1847371/top-enron-fraudster-will-spend-less-time-in-prison-than-a-father-who-sold-his-own-pain-pills/

[niyad]

1. utter insanity

[Go Vols]

2. :/

[on point]

3. Can we form a class action group to sue him for damages we suffered?

[Rex]

4. I dunno what you call it when stuff like that happens.

Well I do and I say it a lot.

[silvershadow]

5. Banana Republic? nt

[Phillip McCleod]

6. if our representatives won't make laws that we can abide by..

..and our enforcement and judicial system won't prosecute and adjudicate fairly..

..then i wonder.. what exactly is the motive for obeying the law?

why *not* rob banks (~75% of bank robbers get away with it)?

why *not* run? why not pirate? why not smoke pot? why not hack?

why not get married?

why not ridicule the notion that gods exist?

why not rain bricks on cops?

..

the contract between the people and the gov't is a two way street. we can make governing impossible.. more impossible than they can make breaking bad laws.

[Volaris]

7. The war on Drugs needs to be ended.

AND we need to have a REAL discussion in America about what is the REAL purpose of incarcaretion for crimes comitted...

[libodem]

8. He is a true crook, too

He should never get out.