Pattie Dunn is the new Martha Stewart, the high-profile headline-worthy celebrity perp the Justice Department needs from time to time to justify its ever growing budgets and staffing levels.
Apparently Dunn got a bit carried away in her bid to ferret out a leaker on HP's board of directors, and the government's fair-and-proportional response was to indict her on four obscure, technical "felony charges" that put her in jeopardy of a prison term of a decade or more.
The leaker, an obscenely rich HP board member and white male good old boy, got to the feds first...apparently as retribution for Dunn's efforts to expose him. In his story enthusiastic federal agents and the California attorney general saw an opportunity to grab headlines and the career perks that come with them. So they began sifting through literally thousands of arcane federal and state laws to coble together plausible sounding charges befitting Dunn's "serious offenses."
Remember now that legislators (the more than 600 "lawmakers" in congress) routinely criminalize so many activities that nobody, not even the prosecutors, can keep up with the list of new "felonies." Virtually any activity any member of congress considers deceptive either has been or will be characterized as conspiratorial and then criminalized. Introducing such bills is akin to enacting them because congress members don't vote against crime bills for fear of being accused of being soft on crime.
Mindlessly harsh sentencing guidelines ensure most "targets" take plea deals and nearly all targets do. Consider the alternative. Fight the charges and prosecutors become vengeful, the number of charges increases geometrically and the legal cost of fighting the government starts at about half a million dollars. The cost of actually beating the government is typically much higher...and well beyond the reach of most people snagged in the government's ever-widening dragnet.
The upshot is that any of us are vulnerable to the creative impulses of unprincipled careerists in local, state and especially federal law enforcement agencies. Just look at what happened to Dunn.
A recent MSNBC report noted prosecutors "patched together" elements of several laws inspired by privacy concerns to come up with plausible-sounding charges against Dunn. Nothing normal people would consider truly criminal activity, mind you (She didn't rob a store, hit anyone on the head or even profit from her actions) but official crimes nonetheless....felony crimes....carrying draconian prison terms as sanctions.
Not surprisingly, several of those who helped Dunn find the leaker are gleefully "cooperating" with prosecutors, inspired no doubt by threats of decades in prison should they fail to help make a case against Dunn.
Basically the same thing happened to Martha Stewart, who went to prison for lying to federal investigators...even though when she wasn't under oath when they questioned her.
Only a relative handful of Americans know it now. But someday -- after a sufficient number of uncles, cousins, sons, daughters, fathers, brothers, nextdoor neighbors and friends have been "brought to justice" by federal agents -- the sad state of American justice will be widely known.
Here's how it works. Federal laws are cranked out like sausages at the Jimmy Dean plant. Public fears of terrorism are used to justify the hiring of additional federal agents by the thousands. More arrests must therefore be made to justify ever expanding Justice Department budgets and staffing levels. And not all of today's federal agents are fastidious about old-school notions of justice. High-profile perps like Dunn and Stewart and a sufficient number of coerced witnesses and they're good to go.
But just remember, if they can railroad Pattie Dunn, chairman of the board of one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world...if they can do it to Martha Stewart, once a titan of Wall Street, what chance do ordinary people have in similar circumstances?
At worst, Pattie and Martha were guilty of entering a gray area....stretching the boundaries of ethical behavior....committing transgressions that ten years ago might have gotten them sued in civil court or merely embarrassed in the court of public opinion. But by inadvertently attracting the attention of career-obsessed "lawmen" swimming in a sea of fuzzy laws, they engendered persecution and threats of absurdly harsh punishments far far beyond traditional notions of fairness and justice.
Wake up, folks. America is being transformed in ways that would have horrified and saddened its founders.
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