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Originally Posted by Mikey_D
I don't like many aspects of the USA system of justice, in many ways it is geared up far too much towards monetary compensation, as if receiving money is a truly valid substitute for justice.
In a civil suit, monetary compensation is basically ALL that is an option. The ONLY way to see incarceration is via criminal prosecution, which is NOT something the individual can bring. Criminal prosecution is an action brought by the State.
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You often see this in cases in the USA where criminal cases are lost and then a civil action is taken afterwards which awards huge sums of money against the defendant.
Civil suits can ALSO occur even in cases where a person was convicted in a criminal prosecution. One does not preclude the other...
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The other thing that is out of sync in USA justice IMO is that some financial crimes are punished with 999 year sentences but someone who physically batters someone almost to death in an unprovoked attack or during a robbery might get 10 or 15 years and not serve all of it, so why is the financial crime deemed to be 3 to 10 times worse?
You need to separate prosecution under federal law from those under State law. The monetary cases are often going to be federal sentences (whose terms are often defined in length by the number of months, not years, and rarely do you see a case with a sentence such as you describe- the media likes to aggregate the totals even though cumulation rarely occurs in the federal sentencing practices).
Where you see a shorter sentence on a violent crime, it is often because of the plea agreement offered BY the prosecutor and accepted by the Defendant. Where a jury recommended a short sentence following a trial on the merits (or even just a punishment hearing following an open plea of guilty), it is generally going to be due to the specific circumstances of the case.
And, since you don't seem to grasp reality...financial crimes with lengthy sentences are often because there were numerous victims who actually have suffered life-long harm. The short sentence violent crime outcome is often one victim without life-long harms having been sustained.
Percentages of sentence to be served is driven by the release practices of the jurisdiction. In the federal system, the individual will serve roughly 85% of the sentence without the benefit of parole. There are, however, still a small number of federal defendants who are serving sentences that were subject to the procedures in place when parole DID exist in that system.
In other jurisdictions, parole may or may not exist for a particular case. However, eligibility does not always confer an obligation to release someone on a supervised status. We still have people here in Texas who have been in continuous custodial confinement since before the 1960s's. Their conduct was so egregious that they won't ever be released. We also have some who were death sentences commuted to life following SCotUS decisions of the 1970's and, again, won't ever be released even though they have to be voted on a regular basis.
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And this Postle case is one in point, the plaintiffs seeking millions (lets say more realistically a couple of hundred thousand each in an out of court settlement, once the total awarded is divided between them), when their real financial losses are no more than 1/10th of that.
This would be because civil litigation recognizes actual damages plus punitive damages. Large amounts are frequently sought because it can be a tool in the settlement negotiations. Very few cases, civil OR criminal, ever actually see the light of a trial docket...
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Real justice, assuming Postle is guilty and that this form of offence falls under the umbrella of a criminal offence, rather than just a civil offence, would be some kind of jail time, and the plaintiffs receiving the amount back they were cheated out of plus some interest, plus ~25% to ~50% of additional damages, not 100s of thousands of dollars each.
That requires prosecutors being willing to present a case to the Grand Jury AND the Grand Jury be willing to return an Indictment AND the case be something that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. You ALSO have some jurisdictions that will tell victims of financial crime that you can have pen time or you can have money...you aren't getting both. And, admittedly, the individual who is incarcerated WON'T be making payments because they DON"T HAVE MONEY in most cases, save for the few bucks a family member sends them. Sure some might have a prison job that pays pennies an hour or maybe produce items in a Craft Shop that can be sold at whatever someone is willing to pay, but that is the exception rather than the norm.
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And if I were a defence counsel I would be introducing this an argument, that the plaintiffs are seeking to maximise the payout from this situation, which demonstrates that within their nature is greed using any and every tool or means available to them, the very thing that they are accusing the defendant of. I think this line of defence would to some degree damage the credibility and worthiness of the plaintiffs in the eyes of the jurors.
Counsel for a Respondent in a civil case knows that there is next to no likelihood of the case ever even getting in front of a jury. They ALSO know that just because an amount is sought in the pleadings does NOT mean that a jury would actually award the amount requested. In those rare cases that DO actually get to a trial docket, the Plaintiff does not just get to say "I want X$ plus punitives." They STILL have to demonstrate that the amount sought for actual damages can be proven up...punitives are often driven by the relevant Rules of Civil Procedure.
