In 1964, William Rummel received three years in prison after being convicted of a felony involving the fraudulent use of a credit card to obtain $80 worth of goods. Five years later, he passed a forged check in the amount of $28.36 and received four years. In 1973, Rummel was convicted of a third felony -- obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses for accepting payment to fix an air conditioner that he never returned to repair. Rummel received a mandatory life sentence under Texas' recidivist statute. He challenged this sentence on the grounds that it violated the 8th Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment by being grossly disproportionate to the crime.
In Rummel v Estelle (1980) the Supreme Court affirmed Rummel’s life sentence for the theft of less than $230 that never involved force or the threat of force. Justice Louis Powell’s dissent noted that “it is difficult to imagine felonies that pose less danger to the peace and good order of a civilized society than the three crimes committed by the petitioner” (445 US 263, 295). However, Justice William Rehnquist’s majority opinion stated there was an “interest, expressed in all recidivist statutes, in dealing in a harsher manner with those who by repeated criminal acts have shown that they are simply incapable of conforming to the norms of society as established by its criminal law” (445 US at 263). After “having twice imprisoned him for felonies, Texas was entitled to place upon Rummel the onus of one who is simply unable to bring his conduct within the social norms prescribed by the criminal law” ( 445 US at 284).
Now consider the case of General Electric, which is not considered an habitual criminal offender after committing diverse crimes over many decades. In the 1950s, GE and several companies agreed in advance on the sealed bids they submitted for heavy electrical equipment. This price-fixing defeated the purpose of competitive bidding, costing taxpayers and consumers as much as a billion dollars. GE was fined $437,000 – a tax-deductible business expense – the equivalent of a person earning $175,000 a year getting a $3 ticket. Two executives spent only 30 days in jail, even though one defendant had commented that the price-fixing “had become so common and gone on for so many years that we lost sight of the fact that it was illegal”.
In the 1970s, GE made illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon’s Presidential campaign. Widespread illegal discrimination against minorities and women resulted in a $32 million settlement. Also during this time, three former GE nuclear engineers – including one who worked for the company for 23 years and managed the nuclear complaint department – resigned to draw attention to serious design defects in the plans for the Mark III nuclear reactor because the standard practice was “sell first, test later”.
In 1981, GE was convicted of paying a $1.25 million bribe to a Puerto Rican official to obtain a power plant contract. GE has plead guilty to felonies involving the illegal procurement of highly classified defense documents. In 1985, it plead guilty to 108 counts of felony fraud involving defense contracts related to the Minuteman missile. In spite of a new code of ethics, GE would be convicted in three more criminal cases over the next years, plus paying $3.5 million to settle cases involving retaliation against four whistle-blowers who helped reveal the defense fraud. (They subsequently lobbied Congress to weaken the False Claims Act.) In 1988, the government returned another 317 indictments against GE for fraud in a $21 million computer contract.
http://www.paulsjusticepage.com/reality-of-justice/ch2-class.htm
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