That was Duke not UNC and 2 of the 3 families were well off. Well worth the fight. They would have still been in prison. Great attorneys representing them
They were innocent. The college admission scandal parents are guilty. Recordings, email, tax deductions etc.
[That was Duke not UNC and 2 of the 3 families were well off. Well worth the fight. They would have still been in prison. Great attorneys representing them
They were innocent. The college admission scandal parents are guilty. Recordings, email, tax deductions etc.]
Guilty of what? Rape is unquestionably a crime and was (1) a capital offense for most of human history, and (2) considered a justifiable basis for multi-generational blood feuds up to, and including, all-out war. Honest services theft is a federal charge of relatively new vintage and was criticized as an overreach by the late great Scalia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honest_services_fraud
[The statute grants jurisdiction to the federal government to prosecute local, state and federal officials. It is frequently used to fight public corruption because it is easier to prove than bribery or extortion.[1][22][23] The term “honest services” is broad and open to jury interpretation, according to several legal experts.[22] Prosecutions under the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) frequently use violations of the honest services statute,[1] as mail and wire fraud are predicate acts of racketeering; therefore, two mailings or wire transmissions in the execution of honest services fraud can form “a pattern of racketeering activity.”[6]
Prosecutions for honest services fraud that do not involve public corruption generally involve corporate crime, although the line between torts and crimes in such cases is considered murky and unclear.[6]
The law is reportedly a favorite of federal prosecutors because the language of statute is vague enough to be applied to corrupt political officials’ unethical or criminal activities when they do not fall into a specific category, such as bribery or extortion.[22] For similar reasons, defense attorneys dislike the law, viewing it as a poorly defined law that can be used by prosecutors to convert any kind of unethical behavior into a federal crime.[22]
Nevertheless, prosecutors must still prove all the elements of mail fraud or wire fraud in a case regarding a scheme to defraud of honest services.[22]
The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the statute, stating that the clause was so poorly defined that it could be the basis for prosecuting “a mayor for using the prestige of his office to get a table at a restaurant without a reservation.”[24]
In The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, investigative journalist Gary S. Chafetz argued that honest-services fraud is so vague as to be unconstitutional, and that prosecutors abused it as a tool to increase their conviction rates.[25] Bennett L. Gershmann, a professor at Pace University Law School, similarly has contended that the law “is not only subject to abuse...but has been abused.”[26] The case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman is often cited as an example of possible prosecutorial misconduct and abuse of the honest services law.[26]
Many interest groups oppose the usage of the honest services law, including the conservative United States Chamber of Commerce and Washington Legal Foundation, as well as the more liberal National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.[26] One notable proponent of the law is the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.[26][27][28] ]
I read an account of the Duke case where the parents claimed to have HELOC’ed their homes to pay for the defense. They may or may not have exaggerated their circumstances, but it was a major financial undertaking. And that was a pretty cut-and-dried rape case where the law was established. Here, everything is loosey-goosey and just crying out for a defense with with real money backing it to take it apart.