In the court systems, various felonies are penalized following the court's guidelines. There are a variety of particulars that go into a sentencing pronouncement. An individual who commits a financial fraud may go to jail for a longer period, compared to someone who commits murder, as is the case of Bernard Madoff, who went to jail for 150 years for committing financial crime and Karla Homolka was sentenced to 12 years in prison for murder. It is, however, clear that an extensive range of verdicts are not necessarily rational to the victims or the scam culprits. This paper looks into the cases of Bernard Madoff, who committed a financial fraud and served 150 years in jail, and Karla Homolka, who faced murder charges and only served twelve years in prison.
Bernard Madoff was born on1938, in New York in the town of Queens. In 1960, he founded his investment company using $5,000 that he got from lifeguarding and fixing irrigator structures. Due to his firm’s expansion, he acquired many clients most of whom where celebrities like Steven Spielberg. In December 2008, Madoff was arrested for operating an extravagant Ponzi structure and was found guilty of committing eleven crime counts. That period, the 71-year-old was sentenced to serve 150 years in prison.
The felonies that Madoff pleaded guilty to included securities deception, wire scam, mail deceit, cash laundering, making untrue statements, falsehood, robbery from a worker subsidy plan, and creating deceitful filings with the SEC. The appeal was the reaction to an unlawful objection filed in the previous two days. The petition indicated that in the preceding 20 years, Madoff had deceived his clienteles close to $65 billion which was the biggest Ponzi scheme ever recorded in history. Madoff maintained that he was exclusively accountable for the scam (Henriques 130). Madoff, however, did not appeal bargain with the administration but instead pleaded guilt-ridden to all charges. The public guessed that as an alternative to collaborating with the authorities, he implored guilty to evade mentioning any acquaintances and co-accomplices who participated in the defrauding scam.
In his petition allocution, Madoff indicated he instigated his Ponzi arrangement in 1991. He acknowledged that he had on no occasion made any substantial reserves with his customers' cash throughout that time. Instead, he alleged that he put all the money into his private trade account at Chase Manhattan Bank. After his clients requested for drawings, he would compensate them with money from the Chase account, transactions that saw Chase and its beneficiary, JPMorgan Chase, earn as much as $483 million (Kurtzman 123). He dedicated himself to fulfilling the expectations of his customers, that of significant returns, regardless of an economic recession. He confessed to dishonest trading undertakings concealed by external transferals and deceitful filings. He indicated that he constantly anticipated recommencing genuine trading doings, but it substantiated problematic, and eventually unmanageable to settle his customer’s accounts. Finally, Madoff said that he acknowledged that the authorities would soon uncover his tricks.
Madoff was sentenced to a maximum verdict of 150 years in state prison by Judge Chin. Madoff's lawyers initially requested the judge to enforce a prison term of 7 years, and later on demanded that the verdict be twelve years since Madoff had an advanced age of 71 and his life expectancy was limited.
Madoff expressed remorse to his victims, by acknowledging that he had left a heritage of embarrassment, as several of his victims have pointed out. He added that he knew that he did not help his clients, which was evident when his victims suggested to the magistrate that he get a life ruling. Judge Chin did not get any justifying letters from peers or family attesting to Madoff's upright actions. The lack of such support further proved that indeed he had disadvantaged many people.
Judge Chin similarly supposed that Madoff was not imminent with his wrongdoings. Judge Chin termed the deceit as astonishingly wicked, extraordinary, and astounding. He said that the ruling would discourage others from doing related scams. Chin also approved the public prosecutor controversy that the scheme originated at some period in the 1980s. He further acknowledged that Madoff's delinquencies were extremely high since state penalizing recommendations for scam merely go up to $400 million in damages.
Karla Leanne Homolka, born on 4th May 1970 is a Canadian serial killer who together with her husband, were convicted of murder. Her husband sexually abused and executed close to three women. She received international media responsiveness when she was sentenced of the massacre. This was following a petition bargain in the 1991 and 1992 murders due to rape, of two Ontario adolescent girls, Leslie Mahaffy, and Kristen French. Karla’s husband was also involved in the rape and killing of her sister Tammy.
After Homolka had been convicted, she pleaded not guilty to the charges. Murray- her lawyer confirmed that he had in possession recorded videotapes of Homolka sexually mugging four women, and engaging in sexual activity with a female prostitute in Atlantic City. She at some point intoxicated an unconscious target (Pron 247).
In the course of the summer of 1994, Murray had developed concern about severe moral hitches that had risen in association with the recordings and his unrelenting exemplification of Homolka’s husband. He turned to his personal lawyer, Austin Cooper, who requested the Ruling Society of Superior Canada's skilled conduct board for counsel.
The ruling society in writing directed Murray to put the tapes in a bundle and hand them to the judge ruling at Bernardo's hearing. The regulation community also advised him to withdraw as Bernardo's lawyer and to inform Bernardo of the order of concealing the tapes. The disclosure that an important portion of proof had been hidden from forces for an extended period of time generated an uproar, specifically when the community apprehended that Homolka had been all along Bernardo's disposed partner. The tapes were not permissible to be exposed to the audiences and only the audio part of it was obtainable to them. Bernardo appealed that while he sexually abused and strained the victims, Homolka would take over and kill them.
After the films had been exposed, it was evident that Homolka was a productive contributor of the misconducts (Williams 140). The community got enraged as the full magnitude of Homolka's participation in the incident was uncovered and the supplication settlement at that moment appeared pointless. Homolka had however revealed sufficient material to the forces and the Crown had no grounds to interrupt the arrangement and regenerate the case.
On 19 April 2010, it was reported that Homolka was qualified to pursue absolution for her misconducts in the summer season of that year. Lawbreakers imprisoned of first or second-degree killing or with uncategorized rulings are barred from applying for an absolution owing to the point that their judgments are a lifetime. Homolka was however sentenced for manslaughter, and got a lesser amount than the ultimate life verdict, rendering her qualified. That time, the Canadian administration presented rule late in the year to make acquittals more challenging to get.
Homolka's filed an appealing bargain before the contents of the tapes were accessible for analysis. Anne McGillivray, Subordinate Lecturer of Law at the University of Manitoba, clarified the persistent public resentment against Homolka. There was a pervasive certainty that she was aware of the place in which the videotapes were concealed, and that she disobediently obscured some victim’s incidents and that her assertions of being under the control of Bernardo's control were unsure.
Though the videotape contents would probably have resulted in a sentence of the massacre for Homolka, an investigation into the behavior of the prosecutor found their behavior proficient and accountable. Patrick T. Galligan in his judgment, he specified that the Crown had no substitute but to discuss with the accomplice instead of leaving the circumstance in a position where the court would not indicate a dangerous and hazardous lawbreaker.
In December 2001, Canadian consultants said that the videotapes were no longer useful. The six recordings illustrating the anguish and distress of Bernardo's and Homolka's preys were damaged. On 4 July 2005, after 12 years in jail, Homolka was free. She had been unconfined from Ste-Anne-des-Plaines prison.
Even though incidences of corporate deception and misappropriation have received a respectively bigger portion of media in the recent past, more people still commit murder with the hope of receiving fewer jail terms. It is, therefore, important that the courts set clear guidelines of the charges that accompany specific felonies. With inadequate resources and an inclination on violent crimes, criminals are habitually only indicted unlawfully for their actions only when the evidence is big enough to deserve examination by law application.
Works Cited
Henriques, Diana B. The wizard of lies: Bernie Madoff and the death of trust. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2012. Print.
Kirtzman, Andrew. Betrayal: the life and lies of Bernie Madoff. New York: Harper, 2010. Print.
Pron, Nick. Lethal marriage: the uncensored truth behind the crimes of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. New York: Seal Books, 2012. Print.
Williams, Stephen. Invisible Darkness: the horrifying case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. Toronto, ON: S.D.S. Communications Corporation, 2014. Print.
