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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28012 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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I think you're arguing that it violates Corpus delicti?

Corpus delicti (Latin for "body of the crime"; plural: corpora delicti), in Western law, is the principle that a crime must be proved to have occurred before a person can be convicted of committing that crime

I'm looking and I can't find anything that demonstrates the federal criminal practice requires corpus delicti for a plea bargain.

If the Judge, the attorney, and Cohen all liked the deal, who would appeal that the facts presented didn't align with a crime?

I am arguing that the judge is a layer of the due process system and that the plea bargain has to at least make sense to them.

If you submit a plea bargain that says I confess to the crime of wearing a red shirt in public, under a DMV statute 23.1, and the punishment for this is death, a justice of the Southern District Court of New York isn't to just go "hurr durr looks good to me".

I am asking to what degree do you think a judge would scrutinize Cohen's plea bargain? I could imagine the judge reading "he's pleading guilty to making a hush money payment to a mistress, as an undisclosed campaign finance violation. does that make sense? well, his client was running for office and she was threatening to go public with their affair. seems like it passes the smell test, campaign finance violation? sure why not"

I could also imagine a judge saying "wtf this would make any action taken by someone spending to improve their public perception a campaign finance violation. sounds nuts. what a bad precedent to set. I'm throwing this part of the plea agreement out. or at least asking the prosecutor to explain their thinking on this"

I fully believe as a member of the justice system, the judge could do the second and from time to time they do. I'm asking you to explain why you think the second thing didn't happen. Because the judge hated Trump? Because he just uncritically accepted it? What?

Sure, I'm comfortable theorizing Justice William Henry Pauley III didn't like Trump and that was a motive for accepting the plea bargain. He was a Clinton Appointee, which means he probably leans more blue than red, and most of the blue tribe was looking for anything that would open the door on getting Trump out of office.

Another possible motive would be liking Cohen and wanting him to get a slap on the wrist in exchange for immunity to other crimes he was accused of. But that doesn't seem to be the case because he said of Cohen:

Mr. Cohen’s cooperation with prosecutors did not “wipe the slate clean,” and that by breaking campaign finance laws, evading taxes and lying to Congress, he was guilty of a “veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct.” He added, “Each of the crimes involved deception and each appears to have been motivated by personal greed and ambition.”

Those crimes represent “a far more insidious harm to our democratic institutions,” the judge said. “Somewhere along the way Mr. Cohen appears to have lost his moral compass.”

The other motive is just wanting to get Cohen on something and wanting it to be done with the least resources possible. That is the most common reason for a judge going along with a plea deal and what I think is most likely here.

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