FCPA Sentencing Box Score

Tfoxlaw is an avid baseball fan. As a child, he was taught how to keep score at professional baseball games by his Grandfather. This had two effects. The first was immediate; it kept him quiet at ballgames. The second is more long term; he continues to keep score at baseball games up to the present. So he appreciates it when he reads (or hears) the words, “For those of you scoring at home” as was stated by the FCPA Professor in his December 31, 2009 posting on the UTStarcom matter. Judging from his posts, it appears the FCPA Professor is also a baseball fan.

In his post of January 18, entitled, “Four Awaiting Sentencing”; the FCPABlog discussed four persons, currently scheduled to be sentenced in January for pleas or convictions of FCPA violations. Two of the individuals are former Willbros employees who have pled guilty and are awaiting sentencing, Jim Bob Brown and Jason Edward Steph. The remaining two are the husband and wife team of Gerald and Patricia Green, who were convicted in a jury trial of FCPA violations related to their attempts to acquire lucrative film festival contracts in Thailand. The Greens were the third of three high profile FCPA trials which were concluded in 2009. See my prior post, “2009-Year of the Trial” at https://tfoxlaw.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/2009-the-year-of-the-trial/.

The convicted defendants from the first two trials, Frederick Bourke and William Jefferson have been sentenced and are out on bail during their respective appeals. As mentioned in its “Four Awaiting Sentencing”, the FCPA Blog stated that “Under the federal guidelines, Gerald Green, 77, is facing between 20 and 25 years in prison; the government wants him sentenced to life in prison.” While a 25 year sentence for a 77 year old man is tantamount to a life sentence, it is not clear how much weight the trial judge would give to the Prosecution’s proposed life sentence.

As pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to Spring Training in only 30 days, the FCPABlog article and the FCPA Professor’s comment got Tfoxlaw’s baseball mind thinking about the FCPA sentencing boxscore for the two defendants in the other 2009 FCPA trials and how that might related to those upcoming in 2010.

FCPA SENTENCING BOXSCORE

Defendant	Sentencing Guidelines	Prosecution Recommended Sentence	Defense Recommended Sentence	Judge’s Sentence
William Jefferson	324 to 405 mos. =27 to 33 yrs.	27 to 33 years	“less than 10 years”	13 years
Frederick Bourke	57 to 71 mos. =4.75 to 6 yrs.	10 years	Probation	A year and a day
Gerald Green	235 to 293 mos. =20 to 24.4 yrs.	Life in Prison	Green does not pose risk to society	Sentencing now set for March 11

 In both the Bourke and Jefferson cases, the trial judge gave jail time considerably less than that suggested by the Sentencing Guidelines and that sought by the Prosecutors; albeit with longer sentences than requested by the defendant’s attorneys. So what does all this mean? Tfoxlaw comes from a civil law background so has no experience as a prosecutors. Perhaps a blogger with the prosecutorial background can help to explain these (apparently) wide discrepancies and what that might mean for Gerald Green.