Our two justice systems

Rachel Marshall

The Washington Post

Paul Manafort is the poster child for America’s unjust criminal justice system, said public defender Rachel Marshall. My clients, who are largely poor and nonwhite, “get none of the sympathy” Manafort did from the federal judge who last week sentenced President Trump’s former campaign manager to a mere 47 months in prison for extensive tax and bank fraud. My very first client was sentenced to life in prison under California’s “three strikes law” for stealing a pair of pants from Sears; his other two strikes were unarmed robberies he’d committed as a teen. He was abused as a child growing up amid abject poverty and drug abuse, but the judge felt not a bit of sympathy for him. Manafort, meanwhile, made tens of millions he didn’t report or pay taxes on, in a sleazy career advising foreign dictators while strutting around in $5,000 suits. But when U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, 78 and white, looked “at the 69-year-old white defendant,” he saw a sympathetic figure who, Ellis said, had led an “otherwise blameless life.” To be clear, less punitive sentencing is a good thing. “But my clients deserve compassion and discretion in sentencing, too, and they often do not receive it.”