I have been struck by the difference in treatment accorded Martha Stewart and the runaway bride, Jennifer Wilbanks. Stewart spent five months in prison for lying to federal investigators about getting and acting on a stock tip that most law professors that I’ve read (including Professor Bainbridge) believe was legal to get and act on. The government disagrees about the legality of her trading and filed a civil suit against Stewart.
Contrast that with Wilbanks (courtesy of the NY Times):
Mr. Porter [Gwinnett County, GA district attorney] said Monday that his office could file charges of making a false statement to law enforcement, a felony, and falsely reporting a crime, a misdemeanor. The charges carry penalties of up to five years in jail for the felony and one year for the misdemeanor, and maximum fines of $10,000 and $5,000, respectively. He said it could take months to decide whether to file them.
Though Ms. Wilbanks at first told the police and F.B.I. agents in Albuquerque that a Hispanic man and a white woman had kidnapped her in a blue van and released her, the authorities there have said no charges are planned. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Albuquerque said the cost of a federal prosecution was probably not worth it because she had told them the truth within about an hour.
“We’re not like the Duluth police department in Georgia,” the spokesman, Bill Elwell, said, “sending people out looking for her for days.”
Mr. Porter said Ms. Wilbanks also called the Duluth police directly on Saturday to spin her kidnapping tale.
I remember one of my criminal law students suggesting that perhaps Martha Stewart got off easy because she was rich. I said that she was treated pretty seriously for a conviction for a first offense of lying to a federal officer. I wonder how many people lie to the police about whether they were speeding. Would they anticipate a 5-month jail term for a first offense (and speeding is actually a violation of law, unlike what Stewart lied about doing, if one credits experts such as Bainbridge).
There are several respects in which Wilbanks’ behavior is worse than Stewart’s and two respects in which it is less bad–Wilbanks recanted fairly quickly and she was probably less in control of her emotions.
I think, nonetheless, that the juxtaposition is interesting.
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