Totally fair! I think part of my reasoning here relies on the difference between “sentence I think is longer than necessary for the purposes of sentencing” (which I would not necessarily classify as an “evil” in the common English usage of that term) and an “unhinged” result. I would not support a consistent sentence if it were unhinged (or even a close call), and I would generally split the difference in various proportions if a sentence fell in places between those two points.
It’s a little hard to define the bounds of “unhinged,” but I think it might be vaguely like “no reasonable person could consider this sentence to have not been unjustly harsh.” Here, even apart from the frame of reference of US sentencing norms, I cannot say that any reasonable person would find throwing the book at SBF here to have been unjustly harsh in light of the extreme harm and culpability.
Yeah, sorry, when I said “unhinged” I meant “the US penal system is in general unhinged”, not “this ruling in particular is unhinged”. I also used “evil” as an illustrative / poetic example of something which I’d rather be inconsistent than consistent, and implied more than I intended that the sentencing judge was actually doing evil in this case.
It’s possible that I’m looking at how the system treats e.g. poor people and racial minorities, where I think it’s much more blatantly unreasonable, and transplanting that judgement into cases where it’s less merited. 25 years is still a pretty long time though, and I wouldn’t personally push for longer. (I would, however, support a lifetime ban from company directorships and C-suite executives and similar.)
I understood the gist in context as ~ “using US sentencing outcomes as a partial framework, or giving weight to consistency when many sentences are excessive or even manifestly so, poses significant problems.” And I think that is a valid point.
Your last sentence raises another possible difference in how to approach the question: My reactions to how long he should serve are bounded by the options available under US law. I didn’t check, but I think the maximum term of supervised release (the means of imposing certain post-sentence restrictions) is only a few years here. And there is no discretionary parole in the federal system, so I can only go off of SBF’s lack of remorse (which requires acknowledgement of wrongdoing, not just mistakes-were-made) in assessing his future dangerousness. It’s possible I would go down somewhat if I could maintain a tight leash on post-sentence conduct in exchange.
Finally, I think it’s appropriate to consider a few other practical realities. It is practically essential to give defendants an incentive to plead guilty when they are actually guilty; that is commonly thought of as 25-33%. Likewise, we have to further punish defendants who tamper with witnesses and perjure themselves. The US system detains way too many people pre-trial, and if we’re going to fix that then I think the additional sanction for abusing pre-trial release has to be meaningful. So I have almost a doubling of the sentence here compared to a version of SBF who pled guilty, didn’t tamper, and didn’t perjure. So to me, saying 25 years was enough here implies ~12.5 would be enough for that version of SBF, with about 9-10 years estimated actual incarceration.
You make a lot of good points. I think there’s a lot of practical realities of an effective system here that I didn’t confront, and honestly, I’m probably better off leaving that stuff to those who know more about it, like you :)
Totally fair! I think part of my reasoning here relies on the difference between “sentence I think is longer than necessary for the purposes of sentencing” (which I would not necessarily classify as an “evil” in the common English usage of that term) and an “unhinged” result. I would not support a consistent sentence if it were unhinged (or even a close call), and I would generally split the difference in various proportions if a sentence fell in places between those two points.
It’s a little hard to define the bounds of “unhinged,” but I think it might be vaguely like “no reasonable person could consider this sentence to have not been unjustly harsh.” Here, even apart from the frame of reference of US sentencing norms, I cannot say that any reasonable person would find throwing the book at SBF here to have been unjustly harsh in light of the extreme harm and culpability.
Yeah, sorry, when I said “unhinged” I meant “the US penal system is in general unhinged”, not “this ruling in particular is unhinged”. I also used “evil” as an illustrative / poetic example of something which I’d rather be inconsistent than consistent, and implied more than I intended that the sentencing judge was actually doing evil in this case.
It’s possible that I’m looking at how the system treats e.g. poor people and racial minorities, where I think it’s much more blatantly unreasonable, and transplanting that judgement into cases where it’s less merited. 25 years is still a pretty long time though, and I wouldn’t personally push for longer. (I would, however, support a lifetime ban from company directorships and C-suite executives and similar.)
I understood the gist in context as ~ “using US sentencing outcomes as a partial framework, or giving weight to consistency when many sentences are excessive or even manifestly so, poses significant problems.” And I think that is a valid point.
Your last sentence raises another possible difference in how to approach the question: My reactions to how long he should serve are bounded by the options available under US law. I didn’t check, but I think the maximum term of supervised release (the means of imposing certain post-sentence restrictions) is only a few years here. And there is no discretionary parole in the federal system, so I can only go off of SBF’s lack of remorse (which requires acknowledgement of wrongdoing, not just mistakes-were-made) in assessing his future dangerousness. It’s possible I would go down somewhat if I could maintain a tight leash on post-sentence conduct in exchange.
Finally, I think it’s appropriate to consider a few other practical realities. It is practically essential to give defendants an incentive to plead guilty when they are actually guilty; that is commonly thought of as 25-33%. Likewise, we have to further punish defendants who tamper with witnesses and perjure themselves. The US system detains way too many people pre-trial, and if we’re going to fix that then I think the additional sanction for abusing pre-trial release has to be meaningful. So I have almost a doubling of the sentence here compared to a version of SBF who pled guilty, didn’t tamper, and didn’t perjure. So to me, saying 25 years was enough here implies ~12.5 would be enough for that version of SBF, with about 9-10 years estimated actual incarceration.
You make a lot of good points. I think there’s a lot of practical realities of an effective system here that I didn’t confront, and honestly, I’m probably better off leaving that stuff to those who know more about it, like you :)