Court Opinion

ID: 9735468
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:16:44.47664+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:58.861612
License: Public Domain

*558Brown, J.
(concurring). The short answer to the defendant’s contention here is that “a deal is a deal.” The Commonwealth maintained that the defendant stole in excess of $300,000 of the public’s money. The defendant agreed to give back $40,000. That was the deal and, considering the alternative, i.e., a sentence to State prison, it was a very good deal for the defendant.
I agree wholeheartedly with the views expressed by the second Superior Court judge, that when professionals such as lawyers, accountants, and physicians engage in criminal offenses of this sort, they ought to suffer some incarceration. Jails should not be populated only by poor people. We now can see clearly that “[a] pen in the hand of a defrauding provider of services to the public [is] as dangerous and damaging to society as a gun in the hand of a robber.” Commonwealth v. Leavitt, 17 Mass. App. Ct. 585, 597 (1984) (Brown, J., concurring). As we said in the Leavitt case, if people commit those kinds of crimes, they must be prepared to do some jail time. In the vernacular, they ought to hear steel “clank behind them.”