Article from Reason by Scott Shackford.
Department of Justice attorneys turned the screws on actor Lori Loughlin and 10 other parents this week by bringing new charges against them for attempting to use their wealth to buy their kids spots at selective colleges.
The new charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and money laundering, filed Tuesday, came just a day after four other parents caught up in the “Varsity Blues” scandal accepted plea deals in Boston. This is not a coincidence. As USA Today‘s reporting makes abundantly clear, the parents who pleaded guilty did so because prosecutors had threatened them with these additional charges. Loughlin and the other parents face harsher criminal punishment now entirely because they are insisting on their innocence:
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Prosecutors are only now insisting on holding the defendants “fully accountable” because these parents are insisting on exercising their constitutional right to a fair trial. Loughlin and the other defendants would not have received these additional charges if they’d accepted plea deals. One of the parents told the judge Monday that the Justice Department told them it would not seek any further punishment if the parent accepted the deal.
This behavior by federal prosecutors is both common and a frustrating subversion of the criminal justice process. Despite our constitutional right to a trial, a full 97 percent of all criminal cases are resolved with plea deals, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit: By St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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Plea deals are often used to elicit guilty pleas even from the innocent with the treat of either ruinous legal costs or harsher punishment. Of course I believe Loughlin is hardly innocent. Still, she deserves the protections of Due Process.
What this rich Actress and others did was akin to what illegal aliens do when They break into the Country (cutting in line where legal entrants await LEGALLY)—-by PAYING “bribes” other Children “legally applying” are pushed back to allow “RICH ( bribe paying ) Kids” to CUT IN LINE. A crime against law abiding deserves both heavy fines and prison time.Just being a Hollywood Star does not make You above all other Americans—AND THE LAW.
Jail time for Lori Loughlin.She is far from above the law.She should have come clean right up front.She thought she would get away with it !!!!!
Screw them! My kids got in to college the old fashioned way, hard work, studying and good grades!
Being White was a detriment that they overcame!
No pity for her, she & Hillary could bunk together.
She got two weeks in jail. That was a slap on the hand.
Plea deals are not true blind justice. The other actress that got a whole 14 days in prison? That was a fair deal for what she did? Hell no. If anyone one of us had done that, it would have been a hell of a lot worse. I say pour it on…they thought their fame and wealth could get them out of this and guess what? I hope they continue to throw the book at y’all. Fair justice right? I’m really tired of this dual justice treatment in America.