Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 17, 1993                   TAG: 9312300034
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SENTENCES

Yes.

But did they raise good questions?

Yes again.

The letters themselves were inappropriate. While the lawmakers made general points about prison overcrowding, sentencing disparities and the need for alternative punishments for nonviolent offenders, the fact remains: They were intervening in a specific case, on behalf of specific defendants, before a specific judge over whose reappointment they have an official say.

But just because questions are raised in the wrong place at the wrong time by the wrong people does not automatically make them bad questions.

The primary issue was the length of sentences - 40, 39, 34 and 25 years - for the nonviolent crime of running a securities fraud. It was a well-organized scheme. But so were the fraud schemes of the notorious Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Charles Keating - all of whom received far shorter sentences for their crimes.

Is that because Boesky, Milken and Keating are in other respects "mainstream" figures, while the LaRouchies were engaged in distasteful political activity? If it is, it shouldn't be.

Or is it because Boesky, Milken and Keating were convicted on federal charges, while the LaRouche followers were sentenced in state court by a Roanoke jury? If so, why the disparity between state and federal punishments?

Or is it because victims of the LaRouche schemes could less easily afford the losses than the victims (including, at least in Keating's case, the U.S. taxpayer) of Boesky, et al.? If so, should that be a factor in sentencing?

Judge Weckstein, despite the lawmakers' advice, denied a motion for further shortening the sentence. He already had made modest reductions in the jury's recommendations. But prudent judges are generally reluctant to impose their own wills too heavily on the sentencing recommendations that Virginia law empowers juries to make. Should juries be given less discretion in recommending sentences?

Would the sentences have been any different, and by how much, if it had been a different judge? Another jury? A city other than Roanoke? A different year? Absolute consistency is doubtless impossible, but can sentencing be made fairer and more consistent than now is the case?

Definitely.

The 12 legislators weren't asking the wrong questions; they were simply asking them in the wrong forum. If they don't like the rules of Virginia's criminal-justice system, it is they - far more than ordinary citizens, judges or juries - who have the power to change those rules.