The relatively light sentence that Paul Manafort received is raising eyebrows. Hopefully it will lead to a long-overdue debate on sentencing reform.
The seemingly light sentence that Judge T. S. Ellis handed down in Paul Manafort’s Virginia criminal case has resulted in a reaction across the country:
WASHINGTON — Judge T. S. Ellis III offered some pointed advice for those who expected him to throw the book at President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for perpetrating a decade-long, multimillion-dollar fraud scheme.
“Go and spend a day in the jail or penitentiary of the federal government,” Judge Ellis said on Thursday night from the bench in the United States District Court in Alexandria, Va. “Spend a week there. He has to spend 47 months.”
Judge Ellis dismissed as “vindictive” and “way out of whack” sentencing guidelines that recommended a prison term of 19 to 24 years for Mr. Manafort, 69.
But to more than a few legal experts, it was Judge Ellis’s sentence that was out of whack. They cited it as a glaring example of the leniency that wealthy white-collar criminals often receive because they have the money to defend themselves or because judges find it easier to empathize with them.
“There are a lot of defendants who are going to prison for a lot longer for offenses that are far less serious,” said Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in financial crimes. “This sentence is leaving me and a lot of people who do this every day scratching our heads.”
By some calculations, with credit for the nine months he has already spent in jail, plus a break included in a sentencing law just approved by Congress, Mr. Manafort could serve out Judge Ellis’s sentence in just 22 months.
The judge had predicted some pushback, but he may not have expected how his decision reverberated around the nation, provoking a social media firestorm that swept up public defenders, prosecutors and ordinary citizens. William N. Nettles, a former United States attorney in South Carolina, called Judge Ellis’s decision “sentencing disparity on steroids.”
“How in the world can we make sense of the sentences that we have been handing down to the poor and to those people of color who didn’t have nearly the opportunities that Paul Manafort had to make an honest living?” asked Mr. Nettles, who was an Obama administration appointee.
Scott Hechinger, a public defender in Brooklyn and a pithy presence on criminal justice on Twitter, made a similar point. “For context on Manafort’s 47 months in prison, my client yesterday was offered 36-72 months in prison for stealing $100 worth of quarters from a residential laundry room,” he wrote.
Many legal experts criticize sentencing guidelines as unduly punitive. But in four out of five criminal cases, sentences fall within or above the guideline range, unless the government specifically requests a lighter punishment. In Mr. Manafort’s case, prosecutors recommended no specific punishment, but said the range of 19 to 24 years had been rightly calculated.
Rachel E. Barkow, a former member of the United States Sentencing Commission, said she had expected Mr. Manafort’s punishment to fall below the guidelines. In fraud cases, the recommended penalty can skyrocket depending on the amount of money involved, she said, leading many judges to opt for a lighter sentence.
But Judge Ellis cut the punishment far more drastically than she expected, said Ms. Barkow, a law professor at New York University.
Judge Ellis said the guidelines for Mr. Manafort’s crimes were distorted by a 2017 decision by the Justice Department that increased the recommended punishment for failing to disclose a foreign bank account, which was one of eight counts Mr. Manafort was convicted of after a lengthy jury trial in his courtroom. He also noted that he had sentenced another defendant who had hidden $200 million in overseas accounts and evaded $18 million in taxes to only seven months in prison, plus restitution.
Greg D. Andres, the lead prosecutor on the case, argued that Mr. Manafort was different because the jury had found him guilty not only of hiding his wealth and evading $6 million in taxes, but also of deceiving banks to obtain millions of dollars in loans. The two bank fraud counts were the most serious charges he was convicted of, each carrying a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.
Mr. Andres also urged Judge Ellis to take the broader picture of Mr. Manafort’s behavior into account, including the crimes he admitted to as part of his plea agreement in a related case in Washington.
