Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Giustizia e' fatta

Un Californiano che ha rubato due videocassette per regalarle alle figle
sara' condannato a cinquant'anni di galera.
Ken Lay, l'amichetto di Bush che, da CEO della Enron, ha rubato miliardi
e miliardi dai suoi dipendenti, e' tutt'oggi in liberta', e proprietario
dell'abitazione piu' costasa negli USA.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,908375,00.html
50 years' jail for video thefts upheld
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Thursday March 6, 2003
The Guardian
The United States supreme court has ruled that a 50-year sentence being
served by a man who shoplifted videos as gifts for his children is not a
"cruel and unusual" punishment.
The ruling was described as "barbarous" by campaigners against California's
"three strikes law", which imposes mandatory penalties for third-time
offenders.
By a majority of five to four, the supreme court decided that Leandro
Andrade should continue to serve the 50 years imposed in 1995 for
shoplifting videos worth #95 on two separate occasions.
Because he had committed past similar shoplifting offences, he was jailed in
1995 under the state's three-strikes law, which mandates a minimum 25-year
sentence for each new offence, making a total of 50 years.
Andrade, who had a drug habit, had no record of violence and had stolen
videos including Cinderella and Free Willy for his children.
"This is simply barbarous," said Geri Silva, executive director of Families
to Amend California's Three Strikes (Facts), an LA-based organisation
campaigning to exclude non-violent offenders from the effects of the law.
"It shows the absolute inhumanity of the highest court of the land. If that
is not a cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is."
The ruling came in response to a decision last year by the regional circuit
appeal court in San Francisco that the 50-year sentence for Andrade and a
25-year term for Gary Ewing, who stole three golf clubs, were cruel and
unusual punishments and therefore unconstitutional. California's attorney
general, Bill Lockyer, appealed against the decision which brought it to the
supreme court last year.
The court's decision upholding the three-strikes law was announced
yesterday.
The California governor, Gray Davis, welcomed the decision. "This is good
for California," said Mr Davis, one of whose main political donors is the
group that represents California's prison officers. He said that the law
helped to keep down crime rates.
Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who represented Andrade, expressed surprise at
the decision. He said that had Andrade committed rape, not shoplifting, he
would have been given eight years rather than 50 because it would have been
his first such offence.
The next likely development will be an attempt to amend the law during
elections in 2004. Pressure groups, including Facts, are now collecting
signatures to put a proposition to the electorate that would limit the
three-strike law to violent offenders. At present, half of those serving
three strikes sentences are jailed for non-violent offences.
"Opinion polls show that people do not want the law to be used for
non-violent offenders," said Ms Silva of Facts yesterday, adding that she
was hopeful of collecting enough signatures to put the issue on the 2004
ballot.
Three strikes was introduced after the abduction and murder of 12-year-old
Polly Klaas in 1993 by a repeat offender out on parole. The girl's
grandfather, Joe Klaas, has joined the Facts campaign saying the law should
not be used against minor, non-violent offences.

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http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0307-02.htm
 
Published on Friday, March 7, 2003 by CommonDreams.org 
What About Three-Strikes-and-You're-Out for Corporate Criminals? 
by Lee Drutman
 
 
Say what you will about California's three-strikes law, but one
thing's for sure: Many Californians voted for it in 1994 because they
were sick and tired of recidivist criminals breaking the law over and
over. They wanted to get tough and put a real deterrent on criminal
behavior. "Our goal in California is to have no more victims," said
former California Secretary of State Bill Jones, the chief author of
state's three-strikes law.
On March 5, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the
law by a 5-to-4 vote. It was a close vote because a life sentence for
a third crime that's relatively minor borders on cruel and unusual
punishment. In practice, it means that Gary Albert Ewing, an AIDS
patient, will get 25 years in prison for stealing $1,200 worth of golf
clubs from a pro shop and Leandro Andrade will get 50 years for
shoplifting $153 worth of children's videos from K-Mart.
Meanwhile, a theft millions of times as large as either Ewing's or
Andrade's remains unpunished and largely undeterred. Just a few days
prior to the Supreme Court ruling, California officials sent federal
regulators 1,000 pages of evidence that they felt proved once and for
all that more than a dozen power companies had conspired to manipulate
energy prices in 2000 and 2001, gouging California ratepayers by $9
billion. Nine billion dollars. Kind of makes $1,200 worth of golf
clubs or $153 worth of kid's videos seem like small potatoes. In fact,
that's more than twice the $3.8 billion that the FBI estimates street
crime costs its victims each year across the entire country.
California officials want the energy companies, including Reliant
Resources Inc., Williams Cos., Dynegy Inc., Mirant and Duke, to pay
back the $9 billion they stole from Californians by overcharging.
That's all. Just pay back what you stole. Never mind that you lied and
stole from millions of Californians again and again and again for two
years. Just pay back what you stole and it will all be fine.
Now, imagine if California had used this same logic with Ewing and
Andrade: Just pay back what you stole. $1,200 worth for the golf
clubs. $153 for the videos. Just imagine if this were the policy of
the state attorney general's office: to let shoplifters pay back the
value of what they've stolen - if they got caught. Californians would
be up in arms; they'd say that law and order had vanished, that the
state was headed for chaos and anarchy.
So, what's the difference between the energy companies and these
shoplifters, save the fact that the energy companies stole about ten
million times more money from ten million times more people?
The main difference, of course, is that the energy companies engaged
in white-collar crime. And in America, white-collar crime is treated
differently. Corporations break the law over and over again, knowing
that they don't have to worry about winding up in jail (after all, how
can you put a corporation in jail?). They might get fined, but many
corporations view fines as merely the cost of doing business, finding
it more profitable to ignore health, safety, and other regulations and
risk paying a fine. Just as street criminals will break the law over
and over if they are not presented with an adequate deterrent,
corporate criminals will do the same.
While the FBI doesn't track white-collar crime, American University
Professor Jeffrey Reiman, using conservative estimates from the
Chamber of Commerce, estimated that white-collar crime cost $338
billion in 1997 - almost 100 times the FBI's $3.8 billion estimate for
street crime costs. Of course, most people are more frightened of
getting mugged outside the grocery store than paying too much inside
the grocery store because of illegal price-fixing. But odds are you'll
lose more money to illegal price-fixing and other white-collar
predatory schemes.
California State Senator Gloria Romero recently introduced a bill that
would hold California's law-breaking corporations to the same standard
to which the state holds its law-breaking citizens. Three strikes and
you're out. If a corporation commits three major violations that
result in a fine of at least $1 million or a death, the California
Attorney General will revoke the corporation's charter. For companies
incorporated in other states, three strikes means that they will lose
their right to transact business in California.
Passing the Corporate Three Strikes law would demonstrate that
California is willing to get tough on crime in the suites, not just
crime in the streets. It would create a climate where law-abiding
companies thrive and give the public a means of cracking down on
recidivist corporate criminals for marketing defective products,
exposing their employees to life-threatening occupational hazards,
ripping off utility customers, or dumping toxic waste down the drain
after midnight. If California's elected officials are truly serious
about helping the victims of crime, and applying a consistent standard
of justice to recidivist criminals, they will pass the Corporate Three
Strikes law.
Lee Drutman is the Communications Director for Citizen Works, a
DC-based nonprofit.
For more information see 
www.citizenworks.org
 or
www.corporate3strikes.org

proprietario dell'abitazione piu' costasa negli USA.
*ROTFL*
E se lo dice il Torrieri che ha rubato miliardi dai suoi dipendenti come
non crederci, visto che lui non fa mai disinformazione! :))
*LOL*
-Stefano


Torrieri, ti prego, non fargli perdere il lavoro pure tu