Flint Official Escapes Imprisonment, Only Has to Write Apology Letter

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: March 15, 2017 at 11:12:40 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Flint Official Escapes Imprisonment, Only Has to Write Apology Letter
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> [Note:  This item comes from friend David Rosenthal.  David’s comment:’Optics not good.’   DLH]
>
> Flint Official Escapes Imprisonment, Only Has to Write Apology Letter
> By Yves Smith
> Mar 15 2017
> <http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/03/flint-official-escapes-imprisonment-only-has-to-write-apology-letter.html>
>
> Yves here. Yet more confirmation that the elites, even low level elites, are a protected class, and crimes versus 
> black/largely black communities are treated as less serious than those against largely white and/or more affluent 
> populations. Imagine what would have happened if you had had the same level of water contamination in, say, San 
> Francisco or Darien, Connecticut. First, the locals would have gotten serious investigations of what was happening 
> way sooner. And being of a higher social class than the water officials, the locals would have successfully strung 
> the parties in charge up.
>
> Now we have the appearance that the party in question, Corrine Miller, copped a plea bargain, pleading guilty for the 
> supposedly lesser offense of covering up for the role of the Flint’s water in Legionnaire’s disease death, in return 
> for help on the lead-related case. But (and experts like Sluggeux please pipe up), my understanding is that 
> sentencing breaks for cooperation are based not merely on the fact of cooperation, but of the cooperation being 
> substantively valuable (like giving important depositions or testimony). Miller was not one of the named main 
> targets, who are Mike Glasgow, Flint’s former laboratory and water quality supervisor and two state official, Mike 
> Prysby and Stephen Busch.
>
> On the one hand, flipping lower level officials to go after the big dogs is a classic prosecution strategy. But on 
> the other (and this may be a gap in the reporting, not in the actual deal-making), the prosecution seems to be going 
> awfully slowly, which is never a good sign for prosecutors and plaintiffs. And more specifically, my impression is 
> that there are usually carve-outs in cooperation deals, whereby if the party ceases being helpful, other charges may 
> be levied. I don’t see any sign that that happened here.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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