Interesting look at a federal sentencing judge (and claims of judge shipping) in college admissions scandal cases
This new Los Angeles Times article, headlined "In sentencing Del Mar father, key judge in admissions scandal offers insight into future decisions," provides an interesting behind-the-scenes looks at one of the judges now at the center of upcoming sentencing in the Varsity Blues case. And toward the end of the piece there is an interesting discussion of purposed efforts to "judge shop." Here are excerpts:
It was a sentencing hearing for Toby Macfarlane, a Del Mar insurance executive who will spend six months in prison for conspiring to have his children admitted to USC as bogus athletic recruits. But on Wednesday, all eyes were on U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, who is also overseeing the cases of 15 other parents who’ve maintained their innocence in an investigation of fraud, graft and deceit in the college admissions process.
Lori Loughlin’s legal fate will be decided in Gorton’s courtroom. So, too, will those of many other high-profile names embroiled in the scandal, among them Loughlin’s husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, and Bill McGlashan, a San Francisco Bay Area financier.
Six attorneys for other parents charged in the scandal filled a bench in Gorton’s third-floor courtroom, taking notes and trying to gain insight into how the 81-year-old jurist views the allegations of fraud and bribery the government has brought against clients of William “Rick” Singer, the Newport Beach consultant who oversaw a scheme to defraud some of the country’s most elite universities with rigged entrance exams, fake athletic credentials and bribes.
They got their answer. In Gorton’s first sentencing in the case, he delivered a withering dressing-down and a penalty to match. Macfarlane’s conduct — paying Singer $450,000 to slip his son and daughter into USC as phony athletes — was “devastating,” Gorton said. Macfarlane’s crimes may have been possible because of his wealth, Gorton said, but his actions were no different than those of “a common thief.”
Gorton doubled the sentencing range recommended by the court’s probation department, and committed Macfarlane to prison for six months — the longest sentence handed down in a scandal that erupted in March....
While he didn’t agree with the prosecution’s argument that the high-dollar amount of Macfarlane’s payment should lengthen his sentence, Gorton said Macfarlane’s crimes were nonetheless “serious and caused real harm,” deserving of a harsher sentence than the range recommended by the probation department....
In a sign that defense attorneys see Gorton as handing down harsher sentences than his peers at the courthouse, lawyers for 17 parents charged in the scandal wrote an unusual letter in April to Patti B. Saris, the chief judge for the district of Massachusetts, protesting the government’s intent to add their clients to an indictment that had already been assigned to Gorton.
Calling it “a clear form of judge shopping,” the attorneys said prosecutors so wanted to try their cases before Gorton that they had circumvented the process that assigns cases to judges at random. They qualified their complaint by saying, “To be sure, we deeply respect Judge Gorton.”
But Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said in a letter of his own that what those attorneys “fail to say — but of course mean — is that they want a different judge because they perceive Judge Gorton as imposing longer sentences in criminal cases than other judges in this district.” Such a gripe, Lelling said, was a “hail Mary by people who know better.” The parents whose attorneys signed the letter were not, in the end, reassigned to a different judge.
Gorton will sentence four parents early next year who reversed their not-guilty pleas last month: Douglas Hodge, the former chief executive of bond giant Pimco; Michelle Janavs, a philanthropist whose family created the Hot Pocket; Manuel Henriquez, a Bay Area financier, and Henriquez’s wife, Elizabeth. The four changed their pleas after coming under pressure from prosecutors, who warned they could be charged with an added felony count of bribery if they didn’t plead.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who determined punishments for 11 of the 12 parents sentenced before Macfarlane, handed down sentences ranging from no time at all for Peter Sartorio, a Menlo Park, Calif., frozen foods entrepreneur, to five months in prison for Agustin Huneeus, a Napa, Calif., vintner.
A third judge, Douglas P. Woodlock, sentenced Jeffrey Bizzack, a Solana Beach entrepreneur and the longtime business partner of surfer Kelly Slater, to two months in prison.
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