cadet’s Fifth Amendment suit was the ideal vehicle for the
Supreme Court to fix a 70-year-old mistake.
The West Point Museum houses artifacts from the U.S. military academy of the same name, as well as the U.S. Army and the Profession of Arms. (Image courtesy of U.S. Military via Courthouse News)
WASHINGTON (CN) Justice Clarence Thomas balked Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider whether the prestigious military academy West Point negligently handled a cadet’s rape claim.
The cadet filed her suit anonymously in 2013, three years after she says a fellow student raped her and she dropped out of the program, overwhelmed by the stress of trying to hold her assailant accountable through West Point’s disciplinary channels. Blaming her superior officers for having created a misogynistic and sexually aggressive culture at the school, Jane Doe said that they not only “discriminated against female cadets” but “put female cadets at risk of violent harm.”
BusinessWorld
April 15, 2021 | 7:06 pm
Bernard Madoff is escorted in a vehicle from Federal Court in New York Jan. 5, 2009. REUTERS
NEW YORK Bernard Madoff, who for decades masqueraded as a successful and trustworthy Wall Street kingpin before admitting to running the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, died on Wednesday in prison where he was serving a 150-year sentence. He was 82.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Mr. Madoff died at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, about 3:30 a.m. EDT (0730 GMT).
His death was believed to be from natural causes. Mr. Madoff had suffered from terminal kidney disease and several other medical ailments.
New York Law Journal, which is headlined Madoff Lawyer Asks Judge to Ignore Hysteria, Impose 12-Year Sentence, the legal team for Bernie Madoff has come up with an interesting proposed sentencing number:
If you are arguing that Bernard L. Madoff should be given a break, you work with what you have. Attempting to mitigate a maximum sentence of 150 years for a client whose name has become synonymous with greed, defense attorney Ira Lee Sorkin asked a federal judge this morning to set aside the hysteria generated by of the largest Ponzi scheme in history and give Mr. Madoff only 12 years in prison.
The
New York Times has this fascinating new lengthy article about the famous sentencing of an infamous white-collar offender. The piece is headlined Judge Explains 150-Year Sentence for Madoff, and here is how it starts:
With the sentencing of Bernard L. Madoff only a week away, Judge Denny Chin received a letter from Mr. Madoff’s lawyer asking for a prison term substantially below the 150-year maximum. The lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, listed several reasons, including Mr. Madoff’s confessing to his sons, knowing he would be turned in; his “full acceptance” of responsibility for his crimes; and his efforts to assist in the recovery of lost assets.
Will Madoff ever leave prison alive?
The title of this post is the headline of this new piece at CNNMoney. Here is how the piece starts:
Convicted Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff will probably spend the rest of his life in jail. On June 29, Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court in New York sentences the 71-year-old. The maximum sentence is 150 years in a federal prison, based on Madoff s guilty plea to 11 criminal counts, including fraud, money laundering, perjury, false filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other crimes. [The Ponzi scheme s] effect on society was widespread, said Ken Rubinstein, asset protection lawyer with the New York firm Rubinstein & Rubinstein. Its effect on individual victims was economically and psychologically catastrophic. I can t see how any judge would sentence him for any period that would be less than his remaining lifespan.