Bernard Madoff's long awaited day of reconing has come and the conventional wisdom is that justice was served. The criminal who perpetrated a fraud of mind-boggling proportion received an equally mind-boggling sentence. While at first glance this may indeed be correct, the cases's outcome reveals more about the prosecutors than it does about Mr. Madoff.
The victims of the fraud all seem to have derived some measure of satisfaction with the sentence imposed upon Mr. Madoff. While the probation office recommended a sentence of 50 years, the prosecutors sought the maximum sentence of 150 years. The judge, for a variety of reasons, decided to go along with the prosecutors' recomendation and impose an unprecedented sentence for a white collar crime.
Mr. Madoff is hardly a sympathetic figure and is arguably deserving of the sentence he received. Still, there problems with the actions of the judge and prosecutors. Most significantly, this sentence almost assures that Mr. Madoff will not cooperate in any future efforts to recover the losses of his victims. It is likely that Mr. Madoff's counsel met with government prosecutors in an effort to offer assistance in return for some measure of leniency at sentencing. Today's proceedings strongly suggest that these efforts were soundly rebuffed by the government.
The government's failure to work with Mr. Madoff in such a fashion is very telling. It suggests that the prosecutors' top priority was not making the victims whole. In fact, it appears that the interests of the victims took a backseat to the interests of the prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors measure success in years. The more time they can get a federal judge to impose at sentence, the more successful the prosecution is considered. This insidious system ignores what sentence is actually appropriate and instead simply rewards those prosecutors who can add more notches to their belt.
Let us suppose for one moment that Mr. Madoff had a rich uncle who was willing to make every victim whole on the condition that he be given something less than a life sentence. I submit that this offer would be rather appealing to the victims, yet vehemently opposed by the prosecutors. Mr. Madoff is the kind of defendant that careers are made of and something as inconsequential as making the victims whole was not going to be allowed to cheat the prosecutors of their prize in this matter.
The point is that the prosecution could not care less about Mr. Madoff's victims. They are merely a convenient vehicle. They are useful props to be paraded before the judge in an effort to take down a once in a lifetime defendant. The prosecutors in this matter are almost assured a move up the judicial corporate ladder and that is what this matter was really about. It was never about the victims.
This reveals the essence of what is wrong with what passes for justice on a federal level. Self-interest and career advancement are the true goals of federal prosecutors. The victims of an offense are merely a means to an end.
Mr. Madoff may indeed be a very bad actor who deserves every day of the sentence which was imposed. Nevertheless, the penalty given has very little to do with the interests of justice or concern for the victims. Rather, it presented an ambitious prosecution with the case of a lifetime and an opportunity for a big leap up the judicial corporate ladder. While the victims may have been front and center in today's proceedings, the case of U.S. v. Madoff was never about the victims.