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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 4, 2003)
6 VS» <3 fiafe *$S3 Get a FREE' PCS Phone If you're looking for a wireless phone, get a PCS Phone by Nokia®(3585i), and enjoy: ^Sprint ° Voice-activated dialing o Cool, new interchangeable covers ° Your calendar, alarm clock and calculator at your finger tips "After $100 PCS Equipment Credit. $36 activation fee applies. No PCS Advantage Agreement required. Sprint One Sprint. Many Solutions.* © 2003 Sprint Spectrum L.P All rights reserved. Sprint and the diamond logo design are trademarks of Sprint Communications Company L.P. THE 12TH MAN FOUNDATION IS NOW HIRING FOR POSITIONS IN IT'S 2003 CALL CENTER CAMPAIGN Earn $6.00 per Hour* Plus Bonuses Gain Valuable Work Experience Flexible Scheduling To apply, visit the 12th Man Foundation Office at the North End of Kyle Field, or fill out an application online. www.12thmanfoundation.com/callcenter * after the first 30 days Rent for $0i00^nonth Be a Community Ambassador, and we’ll pay your rent! We are looking for outgoing, motivated student leaders to help us achieve outstanding student service for fall/spring 2003-2004. If you enjoy working with your peers, are responsible, and want to make a difference in your community, come work for us. For more details or an application, visit us at www.melrose.com, or stop by our office. Deadline: Thursday, June 12, 2003 College Station, TX 77840 (979) 680-3680 New business booms after white-collar crimes increase By Don Oldenburg THE WASHINGTON POST Peter Max’s “Statue of Liberty” print hangs in Herb Hoelter’s office in Baltimore. It’s signed by the world-famous pop artist, inscribed out of gratitude. And well it should be: Six years ago Max pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to tax evasion and conspiracy charges, admitting to trading art for more than $1 million in real estate without paying income tax on the proceeds. Max faced a maximum 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Even the minimum sen tence then — four months behind bars — could have shut down his studio. “His lawyer called and said, ‘What can you do?’ ” recalls Hoelter, one of the nation’s fore most “alternative sentencing con sultants” whose specialty is the artful wangling of the federal guidelines that match crime to prison time. His job is to influ ence judges toward lenient sen tences for his white-collar clients. Knowing that U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood wouldn’t let Max serve his sentence in a halfway house solely to keep his art business booming, Hoelter proposed that Max also do com munity service teaching art to disadvantaged children. The judge bought it, sentenc ing Max to pay back taxes plus a $30,000 fine, to serve two months in work-release and to perform 800 hours of communi ty service in Harlem schools. Max won’t comment on his crime and punishment. But Hoelter says the artist turned the children’s paintings into a mag nificent 55-by-10-foot mural that now decorates a playground wall in Harlem. “It was beautiful what he did,” Hoelter says, calling the Harlem project a shining exam ple of how flexibility in sentenc ing enabled a talented lawbreak er to repay society rather than rotting in the slammer. What troubles Hoelter and other sentencing specialists is what would happen if Max were sentenced today: no Harlem art project, no creative alternative to a stretch behind bars. The federal crackdown on book-cookers, insider traders, tax evaders and other white-col lar crooks — fueled by public outrage over WorldCom, Enron and other recent corporate scan dals — is transforming the tradi tional white-collar punishment of prison-lite into hard time. Many consider this crackdown long overdue. During the past year. Congress dramatically stiffened sentences for financial crimes, the Bureau of Prisons ditched halfway house treatment for white-collar crimi nals with short sentences, and the U.S. Sentencing Commission doubled some white-col lar sentences to as much as 20 years. In April, President Bush signed into law a controversial bill designed to restrain federal judges from lessening sen tences. For sentenc ing specialists such as Hoelter, that’s all bad u The government firmly believes that white-collar defendants need to spend a lot of time in prison... That makes our job all the more necessary. — Herb Hoelter Sentencing consultant cational background is in social work, not law. One case led to another. By the early ’80s, NCIA had started training public defenders in sen tencing strategies. But of 15,000 cases NCIA has handled in the 25 years since, many of them have been of the highest profile, with names such as Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Dennis Levine and Marion Barry. Though arguably controver sial, sentence consulting has evolved into an expected part of white-collar cases, says Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington- based organiza tion of sentencing mitigation spe cialists. “The white- collar client has the best lawyers money can buy and they get the best sentencing specialists money He pages through a two-ini thick report on one of hiscasfi a ' 70-year-old charged will fraud: 20 pages of personal fc tory, the history of his charitaft works, the sentencing alterna tives, and an explanation of wlii the judge should give the defei dant a break — family matters health matters, abuse problem! — plus letters written on lit behalf. “If you’re going to tale somebody’s life for three, fa or five years,” says Hoelter “you have the obligation» know everything you can the person, the crime, the cir cumstances and anything is was going on — and then tit a fair decision. “A lot of people view w6- collar guys as these nefanors corporate thieves. There is cer tainly a lot of stuff that h out there. But there but grace of God goes an awful lotof guys.” The Situation news. Pointing upward, he sighs, “The guide lines only know one way to go.” The Beginning Hoelter is the guy with the get-out-of-jail cards. He is co-founder and director of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, which works for sentencing and prison reforms. The 450- employee nonprofit organiza tion — headquartered in Baltimore with offices in New York, Boston and suburban Washington — pioneered the field of sentencing consulting for all kinds of defendants, from white-collar criminals to death- row inmates. In 1977, after rewiring Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system, Hoelter and his mentor, juvenile justice guru Jerry Miller, founded NCIA to lobby for national sentencing reform. They soon were hearing from criminal defense lawyers seek ing to tip the scales of justice in their clients’ favor. “There was no system before that,” says Hoelter, whose edu- can buy,” says Mauer. Today there are more than 300 sentencing specialist firms nationwide. Alan Ellis of Sausalito, Calif., got into the business in 1980 when, as a criminal defense lawyer, he “saw that court decisions were going against criminal defendants and, for most people, the key ques tions were how much time am I going to get and where am I going to do it.” Of the 6 percent of federal criminal cases that go to trial, the government prevails in 75 percent, says Ellis, whose client list includes John Walker Lindh and Lyndon LaRouche. “There was a need out there,” says Ellis, that wasn’t being met by defense lawyers. “Most crim inal defense lawyers are interest ed in cross-examining the snitch and delivering the closing argu ment that would bring tears to the jury’s eyes,” he says. “I was more interested in explaining to the judge who my client was and why he or she did it and why he or she was worthy of a break.” Back in his office, Hoelter explains how NCIA does that. Since being enacted in the federal sentencing [ lines have bloated to a thousand pages — a complexity upward and downward \ ances judges can make in crime categories. “The guidelines were promul gated with the notion thatfaimes in sentencing would happen-l guy who robs a 7-Eleven for$1(1 doesn’t get hit for 10 years whet the guy who robs the savin] loan for $100 million gets proba tion,” says Hoelter. “But now a disaster that has reshaped the entire federal judicial system"bj taking discretion out of judge’s hands. “Everybody goes to j; There’s now a presumption incarceration,” says Hoell adding that this has contribute!! to the federal prison populalii increasing from 30,000 in 191 to 165,000 now. He runs his finger down column of codes and figun representing months in prisonic the sentencing guidelines. “ can see that the number of zeroes are very few,” he says “The government firmly believes that white-collardefeii' dants need to spend a lotoftinif in prison to learn their le That makes our job all the more necessary.” J Volume MICHAMl. WILI.IAMSON • THE WASHINGTON POST “The average white-collar criminal now gets prison," says sentencing a political reaction.” Hoelter helps arrange mitigated sentences fora consultant Herb Hoelter, and harsher guidelines are "nothing more than victed white-collar citizens. The Tex System Boar sider new r laxiway Easterwood Friday. Funding f< would be bui i, comes grant from Administrati Improvement The retrog ibe taxiway \ You may qualify for a clinical research study if you have any of the following conditions: NECK OR BACK PAIN? C, *<s> o, • Recent onset of muscle pain in the neck or back £> " *•*%-, f.v, / i r,, ‘/A 111 »,t •> t*, r A. \ ~ c O with spasm (involuntary contraction) Must be 18 to 75 years of age Up to $200 paid for time and travel D'fsco Ve^rySearef? O is cove* FACIAL ACNE? • Male and Female 13-30 years of age; • Up to $100 reimbursed to qualified participants for time and travel. -"O OT (979) 776-14!7 o,ton free (888) 438-9586 Medical assessments, study-related diagnostic tests, and investigational medication are provided to qualified participants at no charge. NEWS IN BRIEF U.S. House approves ban on flag burning WASHINGTON (AP) - In what Democrats called an annual GOP rite of spring, the Republican-controlled House passed an amendment to the Constitution to criminalize flag burning for the fifth time in eight years on Tuesday. The one-line change to the Constitution - "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States" - was approved by a 300-125 vote as a pair of holidays approach- Day next Saturday Independence Day in July. Senate passage is less I The constitutional amendment needs a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate and approval by three-fourths of state legislatures. Burning an American flag shows disrespect for America, and the majority of the American people approve of legally pro tecting Old Glory, supporters said. "If we allow its defacement we allow our country's gradual decline," said Rep. Steve Chabot R-Ohio. Cotto Thirty-or Cotton came for science. Now that feelings for excel in the 1 He recen acid for a < research on i abbreviation Texas A&M. compound u; “Not after (be state.” Although new to sciei known about Since the i pounds were tamuic acid chemists cal research. Cotton te; chemistry cc students and “I think T academic en\ He said th out is interest After rece chemistry fre Ph.D. from Massachusett 17 years befc “The shift a big change, was a good it Cotton’s c to work with. “He is re; Beverly Moo in the chert worked with < dry sense of 1 Cotton an near College Jennifer raise horses. Cotto Mide first s By Tere THE ASSOC AQABA, Jc ftime Minister Palestinian le, Abbas launcher •Qg peace plan President Bus Hent, offering c Pledges in he decades of Mid In statement the United Promised to im dismantling dewish outpost while At ■a Arabic — e> the “armec ” referr Palestinians’ 32 gainst Israel. “Our goal i