Bernard Madoff Would Avoid Prison Under Scwarzenegger's Plan

The Los Angeles Times reports that Los Angeles DA Steve Cooley has great concerns that Governor Schwarzenegger's new budget cut proposal to change the state's sentencing guidelines would so weaken the system that criminals the likes of Bernard Madoff would not even face going to prison under it.

In a letter sent to Gov. Schwarzenegger, Cooley urges the governor to withdraw his latest proposal in which 73 felonies, such as fraud or grand theft, would be prosecuted as misdemeanors under state sentencing guidelines.

Cooley did not hesitate to point out to Scwarzenegger that a criminal like Bernard Madoff, who was convicted of fraud for running a $170 billion ponzi scheme, would practically get to walk under the governor's new proposal.

"If Bernie Madoff had committed his crime in California under the proposed statute, his . . . scam, which has destroyed countless lives and fortunes, would have been a misdemeanor," Cooley wrote to the governor. "Such scams are commonplace in California."

Cooley went on to write "[t]he arbitrary reduction of the 73 crimes listed in your most recent budget proposal will have a serious impact on public safety, disproportionately affect many vulnerable victims in society, and usurp the role of the public prosecutors in determining what crime to charge."

Governor Schwarzenegger, facing a $24-billion budget shortfall, has proposed the change in the sentencing guidelines which he believes will save $1 billion over three years by shifting 23,000 criminals from state prisons to local jails and reentry programs.

Cooley and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in Los Angeles warn that the proposal would hinder his investigators in prosecuting insurance fraud.

"This proposal would severely limit their ability to go after career criminals, making simple and complex illegal enterprises much harder to prosecute -- and in the process let criminals off the hook," Poizner said.

However, Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger, said "abandoning this proposal would require increasing taxes or cutting even more from education, neither of which the governor will do."

Written by Gabriel Dorman
gabedorman@gmail.com
www.criminaldefenseduilawyer.com/blog/