The Crime of Being Poor, part 2

by Paul Wright, editor, Prison Legal News

The first part of this article, published in our Sep/Oct '03 issue, may be viewed at www.wafreepress.org/65/crimeBeingPoor.htm

Murder for Hire

If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then murder for hire is usually the continuation of business by other means. Once thought of as the exclusive province of organized crime, most murder for hire schemes involve spouses or business associates seeking to rub out their significant others, usually with some type of pecuniary gain in mind.

Recognizing that murder for hire is probably the most premeditated form of murder there is, by definition it requires planning and conspiracy, most states severely punish the solicitation or conspiracy to commit murder. Severely punish, that is, unless the accused are wealthy. Almost invariably the richer the would-be murderer, the lighter the punishment. In 1994 Ruthann Aron was running for the US Senate in Maryland on the Republican ticket. The millionaire real estate developer and lawyer campaigned on a "tough on crime" platform, as most politicians in recent decades have done. Aron wrote in an editorial for the Baltimore Sun while campaigning for office: "We need to restore the quality of life in our streets and in our neighborhoods by putting violent career criminals behind bars permanently. No excuses.... I strongly support the death penalty, truth in sentencing guidelines and minimum mandatory sentences for violent offenders. The 'three strikes you're out' legislation is a poor substitute for serious crime prevention measures. I favor stricter 'two strikes' legislation that puts dangerous offenders behind bars--permanently."

As with most "tough on crime" advocates, harsh punishment is for the poor. Aron was convicted in 1998 on charges she hired an undercover cop posing as a hit man for $20,000 to murder her husband and an attorney who had sued her over a business dispute. At trial, "no excuses" Aron claimed she was mentally ill and had been sexually abused as a child. Aron eventually pleaded no contest to the charges. Despite state sentencing guidelines that call for a sentence of 8-18 years in prison, Aron was sentenced to only 35 months in prison and five years probation. She was allowed to remain in the Montgomery county jail to serve her sentence rather than go to a state prison to serve her time. Aron was released in 2000 after serving little more than two years in jail, with some of that served on "home detention" in her mansion. In 1996 another millionaire, Maryland real estate developer Charles Shapiro, was convicted of conspiring to murder his cousin and business partner Marvin Greenfield after Greenfield filed suit, claiming Shapiro had stolen $3 million from their joint business. Shapiro was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Ray Evans, a former policeman who was paid $50,000 to kill Greenfield and botched two attempts, was sentenced to 27 years in prison. But with wealthy defendants, it seems criminal sentences are rarely permanent. In 2001 Shapiro had his sentence reduced by 2-1/2 years and became eligible for parole after serving only five years in prison.

Sex Crimes

The past decade has seen the demonization of sex criminals. Sex offenders must register with police and face a host of other restrictions. But unlike crimes committed mostly by the poor, sex crimes still allow for extremely lenient sentences of probation and suspended sentences, with judges and prosecutors deciding who gets these light sentences. It never hurts to be wealthy when convicted of a sex crime. With the exception of drunk driving, no other crime cuts across class lines more frequently than pedophilia. Yet what spurs judicial and prosecutorial outrage when committed by the poor, provokes little more than yawns when committed by the wealthy and well heeled. Daniel Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1976 for his research in slow viruses that attack the body, such as mad cow disease and AIDS. In 1997 Gajdusek, then 73, pleaded guilty in Maryland to two counts of child sex abuse for molesting a 16-year-old boy he had brought to the US from the Pacific Islands, where he had conducted most of his research for decades. Gajdusek was sentenced to 30 years in jail but then had all but 18 months of the sentence suspended by circuit court judge Jim Dwyer.

All told, starting in the 1960s, Gajdusek brought 56 children, mostly boys, from the Pacific Islands to his Maryland home, ostensibly to educate them. At least five boys claimed that Gajdusek molested them. Gajdusek served little less than a year in jail. But his lenient treatment didn't stop there. Within hours of being released from jail in 1998 Gajdusek left for France, where prosecutors agreed to let him serve his five-year probation unsupervised. Gajdusek's lawyer said he would continue his "scientific work" there. Presumably poor pedophiles that don't have Nobel prizes would have had to serve their probation sentences in the US, and register as sex offenders with the attendant hassles that that entails. That Gajdusek used his "work" as a ruse to perpetrate his sexual abuse of children for almost four decades was not mentioned by the court or prosecutors who frequently raise the topic in other contexts.

In 1990 millionaire San Francisco hotel owner Donald Werby avoided child rape charges in their entirety by pleading guilty to two misdemeanor charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Werby agreed to pay a $300,000 fine and was sentenced to three years probation. Originally, a grand jury had indicted Werby on 22 felony sex and drug charges stemming from his hiring of underage prostitutes and furnishing them with crack cocaine for sex. All the felony sex charges, with their potential for prison time, sex offender registration, civil commitment, etc., were quietly dropped.

Russell Macguire is the predatory pedophile that is every parent's nightmare. But the heir to the Thompson submachine gun fortune, who was once worth an estimated $100 million, has led a charmed existence with the criminal justice system. In 1977 Maguire was charged with raping several girls he was traveling with, but those charges were dropped. In 1978 he was found not guilty by reason of insanity for raping an eight-year-old girl in a national park in Washington. In 1984 he was convicted in Florida of molesting an eight-year-old girl who said Maguire had lavished her with gifts, spent the night with her in his condo, fed her baby food, made her lie on top of him and rubbed her beneath her nightgown. Represented by F. Lee Bailey, Maguire pleaded no contest to the charges and received ten years of probation. In 1990 Maguire's probation was revoked for approaching children in a supermarket parking lot and offering them $100 to get into his car with him. While that is not illegal, Maguire's parole conditions prohibited him from having contact with children. Maguire had his probation revoked and was sent to prison for nine years. That proved short-lived as the Florida Supreme Court held that the sentencing judge had exceeded sentencing guidelines. Maguire spent a total of 27 months before being released on probation again.

Rapper Tupac Shakur, who was killed in 1996, was convicted in 1994 of first-degree sexual abuse for luring a fan into his hotel room in New York City and groping her with some friends. At the time of his death, Shakur was out on a $500,000 appeal bond. Appeal bonds for convicted violent criminals are very rare, at least for poor ones. Given Shakur's extensive prior criminal record, this appeal bond was doubly exceptional.

Less than a year before the sex-abuse conviction, Shakur was convicted of beating a video director and served 15 days in jail for the attack. A month after that he was sentenced to ten days in jail for menacing fans in Michigan. Six months after that he was charged with shooting two off-duty cops in Atlanta, but those charges were later dropped. Five months after being arrested on the sexual abuse charges in New York, and while awaiting trial, Shakur was arrested in California on charges of possessing pot and carrying a concealed weapon. Obviously Shakur's race was hardly a disadvantage to him, as he managed to avoid anything but the shortest of jail time for his crimes. If race was any disadvantage, it was more than offset by his wealth and that of his record label, which had a vested interest in keeping him out of prison and cutting albums for them.

The War on Poor Drug Users

The war on drugs is really a war on poor drug users. Estimates of the US drug trade vary widely from $100 to $600 billion a year. The most obvious conclusion is that this money is not all coming from America's poor who, by definition, don't have a lot of money. At any given time, at least 400,000 people are imprisoned in American prisons or jails based on drug crimes alone (possession, sale or trafficking). But if rich and poor alike use drugs, and the law, in its majestic equality punishes drug use by both, why do only the poor go to prison? In 1997 Randall Cunningham was busted smuggling 400 pounds of marijuana from California to Boston. Despite confessing to smuggling two other drug shipments and being part of a huge drug smuggling operation, Cunningham was only charged with one drug possession offense, to which he pleaded guilty. Out on bond before sentencing, he tested positive for cocaine use three times. In November 1998, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, despite statutes calling for a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years for possessing the 400 pounds of pot. Cunningham's father, who made a tearful plea for mercy at his son's sentencing, happens to be Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a US Republican congressman from California. Four months before his son's arrest, Cunningham Sr. was saying "we must get tough on drug dealers." At his son's sentencing, he told the judge "My son has a good heart, he's never been in trouble before." The same plea made by the parents of poor criminals falls on deaf ears.

In July 1998, Claude Shelby was arrested smuggling a half-ounce of hash from London into Atlanta. He was fined $500 by US Customs, which he paid on the spot. His father is Republican senator from Alabama Richard Shelby who has long championed draconian drug penalties. In response to a constituent whose son was imprisoned on federal drug charges, senator Shelby said: "Any person who is caught with drugs should spend the rest of his life in prison. I have no sympathy for them." Senator Shelby lacks the courage of his convictions.

Dan Burton is best known as the Republican congressman from Indiana who pursued president Clinton like a modern day Ahab tormenting Moby Dick. He has called for the death penalty for drug dealers. In 1994 his son, Dan Burton II, was arrested transporting eight pounds of marijuana from Texas to Indiana. While out of bail awaiting trial on those charges, Burton II was arrested five months later growing 30 pot plants in his Indianapolis apartment, with a shotgun to guard them. He never faced federal prosecution, despite it being a federal offense to possess a firearm both while awaiting trial and during a drug offense. Prosecuted on state charges, he received house arrest, probation and community service. Federal law calls for a mandatory minimum of five years for possessing a firearm during a drug offense. For whatever reason, federal prosecutors decided this crime wasn't worth prosecuting.

In 1992 Richard Riley Jr., the son of the former governor of South Carolina, Richard Riley, who was Clinton's secretary of education, was indicted on federal charges of conspiring to sell marijuana and cocaine. He faced ten years to life in prison. Ultimately Riley Jr. was sentenced to six months of house arrest. Riley Jr. was later pardoned as President Clinton was leaving office in 2001.

In 2002, Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida governor Jeb Bush and niece of President George Bush, was arrested on drug charges. Placed in a treatment center, she was found in possession of crack cocaine, but treatment staff would not cooperate with police, so charges were dropped.

Darlene Watts is the sister of black Republican congressman from Oklahoma Julius Caesar Watts. She received a seven-year suspended sentence (i.e. no actual prison time) in 1998 after pleading guilty to possession and distribution of marijuana and methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia and maintaining a property where drugs were kept. Political connections seem to have outweighed race.

It's a Money Thing

It has been said that that there are few problems in life that money can't fix. When it comes to the American criminal justice system, it would appear that few crimes are so serious, heinous or dastardly that wealth can't resolve them.

Probably the most serious violent crimes in recent American history were the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The American national security establishment quickly fingered Osama Bin Laden as the alleged mastermind of the plot and put a $25 million bounty on his head. Bin Laden himself is wealthy, but his extended family is extremely wealthy from their multi-billion dollar construction and investment businesses. At the time of the September 11 attacks some two dozen members of the Bin Laden family were in the US. With FBI approval, they were spirited out of the country by the Saudi Arabian embassy. None were even questioned by law enforcement officials. It is common practice to question the relatives of suspected criminals. Perhaps this is true for poor criminals and their relatives, but not for well-heeled billionaires. Regardless of how monumental the crime being investigated may be.

Michael Milken is best known as the criminal financier who plundered billions through the sale of junk bonds in the 1980s. Convicted of securities fraud in 1991, Milken was originally sentenced to ten years on prison. He had his sentence reduced by a judge and eventually served only 22 months in federal prison. Milken's sentence included a lifetime bar on ever working in the securities industry. Despite paying $1.1 billion dollars in fines and civil damages from his criminal rampage, Milken remains a billionaire.

In 1997 the Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against Milken for brokering several big money mergers in the media industry. In 1998 Milken agreed to pay the SEC $47 million in exchange for the SEC not filing charges to have his probation revoked. Each year some 200,000 people go to prison for violating the conditions of their parole or probation. Presumably they lack the $47 million to make criminal charges go away.

In 1994 singer Michael Jackson was facing criminal investigation on charges he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy. The criminal investigation floundered when Jackson paid the boy a settlement in the 10 to 50 million dollar range to settle a civil lawsuit brought by the child. With the settlement the child stopped cooperating with investigators. While a civil settlement is not the same as a criminal conviction, the obvious point is that a poor accused child rapist can't pay an alleged victim an eight-figure sum in cash to go away. Those who trumpet the concept that all citizens, regardless of race or class, are equal before the law may dismiss the above as isolated examples. But how many isolated examples does it take to make a pattern? On the contrary, it is aberrant for the wealthy who are convicted of serious crimes to go to prison at all, much less for lengthy stays. Hence the lack of correlation between criminal behavior and who goes to prison.

Just as the criminal justice system is not a racist conspiracy, neither is it a fair or equal system. Each step of the way, from policing, to courts, to counsel, to sentencing, to prison, to parole and pardons, the system falls most heavily on the backs of the poor, whether they are innocent or guilty. Designed to control and contain the dangerous classes, the criminal justice system "works" and functions perfectly well in safeguarding the political and economic status quo. At $147 billion a year, America has the best criminal justice system money can buy.

Sources: New Times, New York Times, Richmond Times Dispatch, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, National Law Journal, Washington Times, Baltimore Sun, Palm Beach Post, Charleston Gazette, San Francisco Chronicle, St.Petersburg Times, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Newsday, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, FAMM-Gram, Atlanta Journal Constitution, North Coast Xpress, New Yorker, Seattle Times.

Special thanks to Thomas Sellman for research assistance in this article. This article originally appeared in longer version in the June 2003 issue of Prison Legal News It was condensed and reprinted with permission from the author. See www.prisonlegalnews.org for the complete version.

WWW Washington Free Press