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Abstract

This paper is intended to be the first in a series of papers that addresses whether lower income individuals suffer all of the following at much higher rates than their percentage of the population would suggest should be the case: (1) police stops for questioning; (2) arrests; (3) prosecutions; (4) convictions; and (5) lengthy post-conviction incarcerations. In particular, this first paper addresses the question of whether prison sentences imposed for “blue-collar crimes” are significantly longer than prison sentences imposed for “white-collar crimes.” In general, “blue-collar crimes” refer to crimes that are committed by individuals who possess blue-collar professions and “white-collar crimes” refer to crimes that are committed by individuals who possess white-collar possessions.

I practiced as a criminal defense lawyer shortly after I graduated from law school. As a defense counsel, I represented an elderly, homeless, alcoholic man named George, who was facing 20 years in prison for having broken into a friend’s liquor store at night to steal a $10 bottle of rum. He had not brought a gun or other weapon to his friend’s store, no violence had occurred during his theft, and he had caused only minimal damage to his friend’s store. Then, in the run-up to the 2007-2008 mortgage crisis and near-global economic collapse a few years later, I had a special opportunity to learn about the massive fraud that Countrywide Mortgage was committing. At the time, Countrywide was directed by Angelo Mozilo, the CEO. Years later, Mozilo was forced to pay a penalty of $20.5 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for securities fraud, which amount, in turn, represented only 4% of the $521.5 million in total compensation that he had received from Countrywide in the relevant years of 2000-2008. Mozilo also paid $45 million to the SEC for insider trading, but Countrywide indemnified Mozilo for $20 million of that amount. Following Mozilo’s settlement with the SEC, the U.S. Department of Justice dropped its pending prosecution of Mozilo for criminal fraud, despite the fact that he was one of the main causes of the 2007-2008 mortgage crisis. In that crisis, in the U.S. alone, approximately ten million people lost their homes, approximately one million people became homeless, approximately nine million people lost their jobs, and approximately 9.8 trillion dollars in people’s wealth evaporated.

The criminal justice system’s disparate treatment of George and Angelo has haunted me for years. In order to further investigate whether this disparity is merely anecdotal or endemic to our criminal justice system, several students at St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law and I reviewed all of the sentences imposed by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida for each blue-collar crime and each white-collar crime during the first quarter of 2019. Section I of this paper introduces the paper. Section II discusses the cases of George and Angelo, one a blue-collar defendant and the other a white-collar defendant. Section III discusses the history of sentencing for white-collar crimes in the U.S. in general. Section IV explains the methodology employed in the study of all prison sentences imposed by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in the first quarter of 2019. Section V discusses the results of the study, which revealed that the federal judges in this court, during that time period, imposed significantly longer sentences for blue-collar crimes than for white-collar crimes. Section VI considers some of the possible explanations for the results of this study, and Section VII concludes.

There are a number of possible explanations for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida’s disparate treatment of blue-collar crimes and white-collar crimes on the federal level. This disparity, however, appears to be based largely on the assumption of both the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission that white-collar crimes are less serious than blue-collar crimes, which assumption is nonsensical for a number of reasons discussed in the paper. In any case, all possible explanations for the significant disparity in sentencing for blue-collar crimes and white-collar crimes by federal judges in general and by the judges of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in particular should be rigorously investigated. Furthermore, this disparity in sentencing, if it is to be maintained, must be justified by one or more stronger rationale(s) than the nonsensical assumption that white-collar crimes as a group are less serious than blue-collar crimes as a group. Our U.S. system of justice deserves no less.

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