Paul Manafort's 4-Year Prison Sentence Is Further Proof Of An Unjust Legal System

By Rashad Grove


Have you heard the one about the man given a lighter prison sentence because he lived a “otherwise blameless” life?


That was the reasoning given by Judge T.S. Ellis III of the United States District Court in Alexandria, VA, while he issued Paul Manafort’s sentence on March 7th, CBS reports. In August, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman was noticed guilty of five counts of tax fraud, one count of hiding foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud. According to prosecutors, Manafort hid approximately $55 million dollars of his earnings in offshore accounts, dodged $6 million in taxes, and conned three banks out of $25 million in cash advances on false premises. Despite a calculated 19-24 year prison sentence looming, Ellis sentenced Manafort to just 47 months beyond bars.


Manafort is the latest domino to fall in the Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, whose team has been investigating the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign with the reason for  discovering whether collusion took place with the Russian government. (Though this sentencing was uncovered throughout the investigation, these bills against Manafort were not directly tied to the Trump Campaign; separate expenses claimed Manafort as well as a Russian operative attempted to obstruct the investigation.) The public rebuke of Manafort’s sentence was swift, with several commentators and pundits displaying their shock that Ellis could be so gracious to Manafort in the wake of his convicted guilt.


From racial bias to the selective secrecy of judges, Ellis’s decision highlighted the fundamental brokenness and the lack of faith that people of color have in the criminal justice system In the
U.S.. On Twitter, noted lawyer and journalist Josie Duffy Rice argued, “Manafort is inevitably going to serve much less time than people with much less cash and more melanin. We know that. He's the latest example of the vast divide in the criminal legal system, and that is an injustice on its face.”


According to a 2017 study, most federal judges overseeing white-collar cases hand out sentences well below sentencing tips. Consistently, Black and brown people receive harsher prison sentences than their white counterparts, the incarcerated society of America is growing at alarming rates, and an April 2018 report from the Sentencing Project highlighted the “racial disparity that permeates every stage of the United States criminal justice system, from arrest to trial to sentencing to post prison experiences.” Although with the deep-seeded fractures that are interwoven in the criminal justice system, are we really surprised that Manafort, who'd access to rather influential legal representatives, obtained significantly much less than the minimum proposed sentence?


As the Los Angeles Times points out, the Eastern District of Virginia has a reputation for handing out harsher and longer sentences for those convicted of fraud more than most courts, and Ellis’s reputation is no different: the Daily Beast notes that he sent Tessicar Jumpp for six years soon after she was guilty of running a financial scam, and he handed out a sentence of 12 years and seven months  to former Defense Department employee Lawrence Franklin for passing national defense data to a Israeli diplomat and AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby group.Yet, Judge Ellis has repeatedly railed against the validity of Mueller’s special investigation,which in hindsight, would be seen as a foreshadowing of how he would sentence Manafort.


On its face, there should be checks and balances in play to keep the system from operating in this way. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 was passed with the intention of increasing the consistency in United States federal sentencing, and its points were meant to serve as a check on a judge’s judicial privilege and their ability to hand down biased sentencing. The Act also abolished federal parole. Nevertheless the implementation hasn’t stopped racial discrimination at every level of the system, including representation; as the Sentencing Project reported, Black and brown people who might not directly have the financial resources for lawyers and who lack political connections are severely disadvantaged for fair treatment in criminal justice system In the United States — without consideration of whether they are guilty or innocent. Tragically, they find themselves entangled in a system that was designed to entrap them from very start.


“The ability to afford representation makes a difference,” LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Votes Matter, Black Southern Females, and featured panelist on BET’s new docuseries Finding Justice, tells MTV News. “But there’s been a documented history of how people of color, particularly Black people have been disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system.”


Brown calls Manafort’s sentencing a “prime example” of such an impact. “The court has a sentencing ideas and this judge who is well known to be a tough judge, literally goes outdoor the tips and gives Manafort one-fifth of the sentence that should be in the ideas. Yet whenever a Black elected official, William J. Jefferson, was charged [with] similar crimes, he gave him 13 years in prison,” she adds, pointing to the 2009 case in which  Democratic Congressman William J. Jefferson was noticed guilty of corruption.


Once it comes to sentencing in our courts, race is still a undeniable factor. In the American Civil Liberties Union’s report from 2014, racial inequalities are interwoven into the criminal justice system in each stage. It is racial privilege that keeps the machine of the criminal justice system moving. Depending on your social status In America, the justice system will either work for you or against you; Manafort, a prosperous white man with political connection and expensive attorneys, acquired a lighter sentencing than several Black and brown people who are in some cases forced to plead guilty to lesser crimes. And for Black and brown people specifically, the empathy extended to Manafort by Ellis was a remainder of how the criminal justice system is often titled against them.


According to Glenn E. Martin, president of GEM Trainers and founder of JustLeadershipUSA, "The most longstanding prison diversion program In America has been white skin and privilege.” Martin views Manafort’s sentencing as “an possibility for Black and Brown people to highlight the racist hypocrisy in our criminal justice system, nevertheless it also opens up the possibility to push for leveling down for each person. The compassion and wariness that Manafort experienced should be extended to all defendants, not just those who can afford justice."


Yet reforming our criminal justice system is perplexing, and often feels like an insurmountable task; what good can civilians do in the face of, not just the law, yet the laws about the law? According to Brown,  “It's not just how do we just fix it yet there has to be a complete recalling and restructuring of the criminal justice system because that entire system was created on the basis of exploitation of black and poor people.”


Identically, Martin believes that a coalition of Black, brown, and white Residents of the
U.S., Who all recognize the historical injustices the penal system, key is a prominent part of creating a sustainable movement to address the criminal justice system. He observed, “There's no history of successful movements that have helped people of color in this nation without white people on board. And thus while we need to continue to highlight the systemic racism in the system, simultaneously we need to find ways to help usually poor white people visualize how the system is also demolishing their lives.”


Radically reforming our criminal justice system will not benefit those entrapped in the web the system, yet the whole society at large. According to recent research by the Sentencing Project, over 2.2 million Residents of the United States are currently imprisoned, making the United States the undisputed leader in incarceration, plus it expenses approximately $87 billion per year in taxpayer cash to keep the wheels of the criminal justice system motion.


group in attempt to dismantle an oppressive system, it will demand more than those who are directly  affected by it. It will take a Herculean effort of grassroot organizers, courageous politicians, participants from society and private sector, and and the enactment of equitable public policies that are committed to a radical reformation of our criminal justice system. Up until we can muster the political will to prepare lasting change in our criminal justice system, the words of activist and author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson will remain true: “it's better to be prosperous and guilty than poor and innocent.”