Our vile, disgusting, embarrassing criminal 'justice' system

Mark Steyn on the reincarceration of Conrad Black.  Our 'justice' system is exhibit number one for why the United States has descended into fascist night.  I used to get in fights in Abu Dhabi as a kid, defending my country.  But now I must say it:  I am embarrassed to be an American

We suck.

Break it up.  Break it all up.

I am overseas at the moment and have just caught up on the coverage of Judge Amy St Eve’s decision yesterday to send my old boss (and now NRO colleague) Conrad Black back to jail. Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of the “honest services” basis of his conviction, Conrad was released from prison in Florida, after serving two years, to await re-sentencing. Given that he was, in effect, improperly convicted on the majority of charges, a civilized and humane justice system would have concluded that it was both absurd and vindictive to return him to his cell for the one shred of the United States Government’s case that has not been tossed out along the way in Conrad’s seven year battle.

But the Department of Justice is not civilized and humane. As I wrote here:

The federal justice system is a bit like one of those unmanned drones President Obama is so fond of using on the unfortunate villagers of Waziristan. Once it’s locked on to you and your coordinates are in the system, it’s hard to get it called off. Three years ago, during his trial in Chicago, I suggested to the defendant he’d be better off saving his gazillions in legal fees and instead climbing under the tarp in the bed of my truck and letting me drive him over the minimally enforced Pittsburg-La Patrie border crossing to Quebec and thence by fishing boat to a remote landing strip on Miquelon where a waiting plane could spirit him somewhere beyond the reach of the U.S. Attorney. Estimated cost: about a thousandth of what he’d spent on lawyers to date. P’shaw, scoffed Conrad, or ejaculations to that effect. He was not a fugitive but an innocent man, and eventually he would be vindicated by the justice system of this great republic.

But that’s not possible – because, with a system that relies on  multiple charges and an ability to pressure everybody else in the case to switch sides, you can win (as Conrad did) nineteen-twentieths of the battles and still lose the war. He’s a wealthy businessman, and nobody has any sympathy for those. But it’s even worse if you’re a nobody. A New Hampshire neighbor of mine had the misfortune to attract the attention of federal prosecutors for one of those white-collar “crimes” no one can explain in English. The jury acquitted him in a couple of hours. Great news! The system worked! Not really. By then, the feds had spent a half-decade demolishing his life, exhausting his savings, wrecking his marriage, and driving him to attempt suicide. He’s not a big scary businessman like Conrad, just a small-town nobody. And he’ll never get his life back. Because, regardless of the verdict, the process is the punishment – which is the hallmark of unjust justice systems around the world.
As to white-collar crime, what about the one type of white-collar crime that goes entirely unpunished? For an accounting fraud of $567 million, Enron’s executives went to jail, and its head guy died there. For an accounting fraud ten times that size, the two Democrat hacks who headed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick, walked away with a combined taxpayer-funded payout of $116.4 million.  Fannie and Freddie are two of the largest businesses in America, but they’re exempt from SEC disclosure rules and Sarbanes-Oxley “corporate governance” burdens, and so in 2008, unlike Enron, WorldCom or any of the other reviled private-sector bogeymen, they came close to taking down the entire global economy. Yes, yes, I know two wrongs don’t make a right (unless you’re Jamie Gorelick), but what then is the point of the SEC?
Judge St Eve’s decision is appalling. In my weekend column, I write about “nation-building” at home and abroad. Federal justice shares with those subjects what is the defining characteristic of US Government in the early 21st century – grotesque excess and an utter lack of proportion.