I think that’s true of a lot of Ponzi schemes, possibly even most.
These frequently arise out of legitimate investment schemes, that don’t pan out nearly as well anticipated. At that point the guy has a choice of informing the investors that things aren’t panning out, in which case they will likely all pull their money out and the whole thing collapses - legal but financially ruinous - or to “fake it until we make it”, by informing the investors that things are going well, and hope-and-pray that in the coming months and years things go well enough that you can catch up and turn legit again.
Madoff claims that happened with him, and I incline to believe him.
Of course, there could be any number of people who were in this situation and took that approach and did eventually turn it around and were thus never caught. No way to know about those.
There is a hearing scheduled for next week to discuss the hung charges. A sentencing date will also be set then. I’m sure the government would prefer to know the sentence before deciding whether to retry the remaining three charges, but the schedule might not work out for them.
Current consensus from legal folks is that the government will not retry them, given theyalready have four guilty verdicts and most likely a poor chance of getting new convictions.
That wouldn’t surprise me at all, under the circumstances. If she gets a slap on the wrist at sentencing, though, they just might take a deep breath and proceed on those other charges.
Sure, but that’s one of those legal ideals about how the process works, which I think obfuscates what actually goes on. No juror is considering each charge ex nihilo, and robotically checking if each element was proven. The charges are being considered in light of each other, with regard to punishment and, yes, one’s moral considerations of whether such punishment is deserved. And there’s the possibility of deals and such, to get things done.
I will agree that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about why they decided as they did. But I am not a fan of this type of language that effectively treats it like an automatic process with no moral culpability. There is room for someone to judge in the way above, even if I do think such judgements are premature at this time.
I also am not sure the jury instructions would be all that important. From what I understand, there shouldn’t really be any surprises in them. It should be stuff like reminders about the law and explaining how important their job is. I would expect most lawyers to be able to predict exactly what was said (assuming the judge acted properly, of course) simply by knowing the law and how the process is supposed to go.
I must disagree. Jurors deciding whether a person is guilty of criminal charges are not told about punishment, which is decided separately. A jury’s deliberations would not include some discussion along the lines of “well, if she’s guilty of all of these charges, it’s going to add X years to her sentence, and she’s doesn’t need to be in prison that long”, because they would never be given that information.
Yep. One of the juries I was on convicted on one charge, acquitted on another. None of us had any idea what the punishment was for either charge. Turns out we convicted on the one that carried 5x the potential jail sentence (but the convicted didn’t receive anywhere remotely near the maximum), but none of knew that when we were discussing them. Which we did quite separately, without much reference to the other.
I’d bet good money that any trial attorney would strongly disagree with this, as well. The jury instructions are one of the most important parts of the trial - it can literally make or break the case. And it will be a source of significant argument between the parties (thereby creating a ripe area for appeal).
On its face, you may think this doesn’t make sense. There are “standard jury instructions”, right? Yes, but then the lawyers can ask for additional instructions, and will argue with the judge over whether the law allows for such instructions and whether the evidence warrants their inclusion.
Just to make up some language to give an example:
A jury instruction for Fraud may say that it requires, among other things, that the government prove that the defendant committed a “misrepresentation of fact”.
Now, imagine you are the defense and you get the judge to add an instruction that says
“A person doesn’t misrepresent a fact if they sincerely believe it to be true.”
Now, imagine that prosecutor gets to add an instruction that says
“A person is not entitled to claim that they sincerely believed a fact to be true if they had access to information which could have confirmed or contradicted that fact, but chose not to consider it.”
Again, I’m just making up words, but you might get a sense of how instructions can sway a jury
(To cite a more common, real example, if I was defending somebody against a DUI, it would be very important that I get the court to include an instruction that says that the mere smell of alcohol on one’s breath is not necessarily inconsistent with legally operating a vehicle - there is case law which supports this, so it is something a judge can and will allow, and it is usually something that resonates if the defendant maybe had a few beers but wasn’t acting sloppy or driving erratically).
Agree with @Moriarty : jury instructions may be as straightforward as possible to judges and lawyers, but for the jury, it’s likely the first time they’ve heard basic concepts like elements of the offence and the intention of the accused, and the principle of a reasonable doubt, let alone the detailed instructions relating to each charge. And the judge tells them to follow those instructions on the law. That’s why the instructions are such an important part of the trial.
At one point in the jury I mentioned above we were trying to suss out an instruction that was causing a lot of debate. It basically revolved around whether a law referred to direct knowledge of a crime or could it be assumed that a “buck stops here” concept of the senior person being ultimately responsible was good enough to convict. So we sent a written note to the judge asking for clarification. She replied that she couldn’t clarify any further and we just had to refer back to the written instructions. After the trial we asked her about that and she said naturally the defense and prosecution lawyers immediately weighed in on opposite sides of that debate so she just had to kick it back to us to decide.
I was too. I was the foreman and we definitely referred to the instructions. It was not a pleasant case. A girl child was sexually abused by the nanny’s husband. We convicted him.
We certainly did consider each charge separately. We did not consider all charges together, ‘in light of each other’ as you say.
I was on a jury for a relatively small crime (he stole a bicycle). We never knew until after we gave our verdict that it was a three strikes trial, and this was the defendant’s third strike.
The defense attorney tried to guilt us out (came out in the hallway after we’d been dismissed and angrily harangued us). The DA followed after and tried to mollify us. I did feel somewhat guilty, and I do not believe in three strikes laws, but we did what we had to with no knowledge of the possible penalty.
In my case I was the foreman (they called it the presiding juror). It was for a guy who battered two women at a club and we convicted on both counts. We had no idea what the penalty would be and it didn’t come up in our deliberations at all.
It was a pretty minor case and the PD and the ADA were new at their jobs. The judge said that both lawyers requested that anyone willing could stay behind and talk to them and maybe five of us did. They asked us questions together about how we came to our decision.
The kid that we convicted was a dick. His whole defense was based on stupid ass reasonable doubt shit that didn’t hold water. Several months after the trial I happened to run into the judge at a local festival and asked him about the outcome. The kid appealed and lost on appeal and was sentenced to, as I recall, eighteen months in jail.
He could have taken a plea and probably would have gotten probation. The battery was grabbing one woman’s arm hard and leaving a bruise because she wouldn’t dance with him and then pushing another woman to the ground when she tried to intervene. There were uninvolved witnesses who clearly saw the whole thing. I was annoyed that he wasted everyone’s time by taking it to trial but the process was fascinating and I was proud to be a part of it.
On the other side of that, if a person had been convicted of theft ten previous times, someone who knew that might be more inclined to think that they were guilty of this additional theft since they were a known thief. Any previous history shouldn’t be known by a jury so they can consider the crime in a vacuum.