This new Los Angeles Times article, headlined "Prosecutors in college admissions scandal fighting for prison time for parents," reports on arguments and analyses in the run up to the federal sentencings of other persons who have pleaded guilty in the high-profile college admissions scandal. Here are highlights:
Shortly before she sentenced Felicity Huffman this month to two weeks in prison for her role in the college admissions scandal, a judge settled a lingering legal dispute. Prison sentences for parents who admitted to taking part in the scheme would not be based on how much money they paid to take part in the scam, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled.
The ruling didn’t impact Huffman because the $15,000 she paid to rig her daughter’s college entrance exams was far less than what others shelled out. But starting this week, Talwani will sentence 10 more parents, and her decision dealt a blow to prosecutors, who tried to convince her that higher payments should mean longer sentences.
The parents and their attorneys, meanwhile, have been left with mixed signals from the judge. On the one hand, her ruling means parents could receive significantly lower prison sentences or avoid prison altogether. On the other, Talwani’s decision that Huffman should spend some time incarcerated is a sign she’ll come down as hard or harder on other parents, experts said. “She would need a very compelling reason to give someone with the same or more culpability less time,” said James Felman, an attorney and expert on white-collar sentencing norms who isn’t involved in the case.
The prosecution doubled down after their defeat. In an effort to salvage the prison sentences they maintain are warranted in the case, they are trying a new tack. Rather than staking the rationale for incarceration to the five- and six-figure sums parents paid to access the bribery and cheating operation run by college admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer, the government wants Talwani to punish them for the deviousness and audaciousness of their crimes.
Under the new approach put forth in court papers filed by Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Rosen, parents who took elaborate, deliberate steps to sneak their kids into a school or tried to cover their tracks afterward would be more culpable than someone who simply wrote Singer a check.
Rosen’s gamble will be tested this week when Talwani sentences two Los Angeles businessmen in court hearings Tuesday and Thursday. Up first is Devin Sloane, an executive at a water technology company who has admitted paying Singer and an alleged accomplice $250,000 to get his son into USC by misrepresenting the teen as a talented water polo player who deserved a spot on the school’s team.
Before Talwani made her ruling, Rosen asked the judge to sentence Sloane to one year in prison. The prosecutor did not budge from the request in a new filing last week, even though the judge’s order means Sloane — and all of the parents Talwani sentences — are eligible for sentences ranging from no time in prison to six months incarcerated under federal sentencing guidelines that judges consult.
Rosen argued in his recent filing that a year in prison was still the appropriate penalty, pointing to what he called Sloane’s “moral indifference during the fraud, and his lack of remorse afterward.”... Rosen also revived the idea that the size of Sloane’s payment should have some bearing on his sentence, despite Talwani’s ruling. He wrote that while the $250,000 sum is “an imperfect measure of blameworthiness,” it still amounted to an “indication, however rough, of the lengths he was willing to go to obtain the illegal fruits of a fraud scheme.”
Nathan Hochman, an attorney for Sloane, countered with a lengthy written plea, making a case for why Talwani should spare the 53-year-old father from prison. Hochman portrayed Sloane as a stand-up, well-intentioned father who got caught up in the pressure cooker of the college application process and made a regrettable decision. Far from eschewing responsibility, Hochman said Sloane owned up to his crime soon after he was arrested in March. Instead of prison, Hochman urged to Talwani to give Sloane probation and 2,000 hours of community service.
Attorneys for Stephen Semprevivo, who will be sentenced Thursday, asked Talwani to spare him prison as well, saying probation and 2,000 hours of community service would suffice. Semprevivo, they wrote in a court filing, was a “victim” of Singer, a “master manipulator” who coaxed and eventually coerced Semprevivo into going through with the fraud.
Rosen rebuffed that portrayal, saying the Los Angeles business development executive should spend 13 months in prison for conspiring with Singer to bribe a Georgetown tennis coach to recruit his son, who didn’t play tennis, at a cost of $400,000. Rosen laced into Semprevivo for making his son “an active participant in a long-term federal crime” and making the decision to file a lawsuit against Georgetown in an attempt to keep the school from annulling his son’s credits.
Prior related posts:
- Mapping out next possible celebrity sentencings in wake of indictment in college admissions scandal
- Big batch of federal plea deals (with relatively low sentencing ranges) in college admissions scandal
- Summer sentencing (with notable particulars) for first college admission scandal parents to enter pleas in court
- Federal district judge rejects feds request for significant prison term in first sentencing of college bribery scandal
- Gearing up for the federal sentencing of Felicity Huffman and others involved in college bribery scandal
- Feds recommending incarceration terms from 1 to 15 months for parents involved college bribery scandal
- Noticing the interesting (but perhaps not too consequential) guidelines "loss" issue lurking in the college bribery cases
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