Louise Williamson

Project

Presentation

Progress Log

Capstone Essay

Louise Williamson

Mr Caballero

English 8

3 May 2020

Why Sentences Vary for Different Types of Larceny

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” (Lee 30) says Atticus Finch, one of my inspirations. This is a valuable lesson that I try to apply in my everyday life, and I think people need to remember in the courtroom. The goal of my project was to figure out why white collar crimes are not punished as harshly as blue collar crimes, and to learn about the role of ethics in the jury’s decision. I found that it is not the laws that are causing this problem, it is the people interpreting them. To accomplish this I needed background information to narrow down my hypotheses, so I performed some research about the laws in different states, and chose Virginia as the example used in the illustrations of the concepts, because it has the lowest felony minimum,which is the amount of money one must steal for the crime to be considered a felony, in the country. With that information I was able to answer my guiding question, how ethics play a role in adjudicating different types of larceny.

The retail industry of America loses approximately 30 billion dollars each year because of felony theft alone, according to the National Retail Federation (Gayla). Larceny is a paramount issue in the United States, and its judicious prosecution is necessary for our functioning society. “Larceny” is a broad term, and encompasses many different types of crimes, from street crimes like theft to whitecollar crimes like embezzlement. White collar crimes are crimes committed in a professional environment and usually by someone of a higher social standing, as opposed to blue collar crimes that are usually committed in person and typically by those of a lower social standing. The laws of many states say that the penalty should be uniform regardless of the type of larceny, however, when crimes come to court that is not always the case.

Before this issue can be addressed, one must analyze a bit more what larceny is. Larceny is simply the unlawful taking of someone else’s property, whether it be money, personal items, or even livestock. There are a few larcenous categories, and they are based on how much money is stolen or how much the property stolen is worth. The first is a misdemeanor. A crime is classified as a misdemeanor if the amount taken was less than that state’s felony minimum, which in Virginia is $200. Anything more than that is considered a felony, including the second and third categories. The second is petty larceny, which is if the amount is more than $200 but less than $500. Any larcenous crime committed where more than $500 is taken falls under the third category, grand larceny (Gayla). Penalties for the crimes are different based on which category a crime falls under. The Virginia laws dictate that a misdemeanor or petty larceny must be penalized with up to one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $2500 (Wildeus). According to the legal statute of Virginia, if someone commits grand larceny, they could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison, and/or given a fine of $2500 accompanied by up to a year in prison. These laws are for any form of larceny. The laws of Virginia ensure that the penalties are the same.

The following are two cases of crimes both committed in Virginia, one a grand larceny, theft, case, and the latter an embezzlement case. Two years ago, Marquis Larosa Buckley (41 in 2018) conspired with Austin Lee Howard (35 in 2018) to rob a PNC Bank in Virginia Beach, from which they stole $8404. According to a local news source, the two men had stolen from a Fulton Bank and an SPE Credit Union shortly before moving on to the PNC. While inside the Virginia Beach bank, Buckley fired a gun at the wall to force the tellers to turn over the money faster. He also set a fake bomb with the sole purpose to be a diversion so he had time to escape to the waiting getaway car being driven by his accomplice (“Man”). In comparison to this theft case, Anita Foster-Machado (50 at the time of the crime) was convicted of embezzling $20,000 in 2014. She was the director of new development of the Bristol Virginia Public Library Foundation, and her role was to oversee new donations. It was found that she had been using the library foundation’s credit card for personal purposes, from early 2010 to June 2013. Foster-Machado had used the credit card to purchase clothing, and two and a half years’ worth of Botox treatments before she was caught (Smith). These two crimes with similar damages were not treated as similar by the court. Though Buckley had stolen from multiple banks, the amount he took only came out to a total of about $16,500 (“Man”), and he was faced with a greater sentence than Foster-Machado, who took a greater amount of money. Buckley was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and so was Howard (“Man”). Foster-Machado was originally sentenced to 20 years, but 18 of them were suspended leaving her with just two years in jail. She was also charged with a total of six different felony counts, but four of them were dropped (Soares). In summary, Foster Machado embezzled more money than Buckley stole, and she received a much lesser sentence.

Overall, 37 percent of white collar criminals, who are convicted in the United States do not go to prison at all. To contrast, only nine percent of those convicted of narcotics offenses stay out of prison (Curry and Miller). The political environment including national administrations influence the length of sentences of particular crimes. On average, with Republican Congress control and an assumingly Democratic president, white collar crime sentences are 24 per cent shorter than with a Republican president. This indicates that only the serious cases are chosen for prosecution under Republican administrations, begetting higher sentences on average (Curry and Miller).

An example of a short sentence for a pronounced embezzlement would be the Paul Manafort case. On 21 August, 2018, Paul Manafort was convicted of 8 counts of bank and tax fraud totalling somewhere between 12 and 30 million dollars. In March 2018 he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, when he could have received 24. The judge in charge of prosecuting this crime, Judge Ellis, says this was because of his “otherwise blameless life.” In my opinion this is unfair because this trial was not about past crimes and the current crime at hand. However, one should address some logical reasons why this can happen. For example, many white collar crimes involve extremely complicated accounting schemes, without witnesses, often making them difficult to understand and prove (Curry and Miller). Of course, it is not only the professional lawyers and judges who make the decision. All criminals have a constitutional right to testify before a jury of their peers.

The jury is a group of people who help decide a defendant’s sentence. The jury is made up of twelve people if the crime is felonious, and only six if it is a misdemeanor (McKey). Studies show that the jury’s decision is based on each juror's moral code. According to a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, Johnathon Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” there are five decision making foundations, and the decision is based on how sensitive someone is to them. The first is care and harm, which concerns whether or not the defendant’s actions were in the interest of the public. The second is about fairness and the expectation that in doing something selfless for someone else, they will do something for you in return. In the case of the courtroom, jury members ask themselves, ‘did the defendant intend to level out the playing field, or was the crime committed to get an unfair advantage?’ The third is loyalty and betrayal, for example, wanting to fit in and betraying someone to do so. The fourth is about authority and whether or not the defendant respected the rights that go along with someone’s position in a professional or social hierarchy. Finally, the fifth is simply the disgust the juror feels (Rudrich and Koenig). One might conclude that the disgust at the picture an attorney paints of something violent or causing injury will then be focused on the guilty party. These five points are the foundations of the jury’s ethical decision making.

The actions of the lawyers may affect the outcome in many ways. Lawyers may use different tactics to get a juror on their client’s side. One method is to tell the case in story form so that the information is not twisted when the juror inherently organizes it into a story himself to better understand (Rudrich and Koenig). When the juror does this, they may choose to identify a “victim” and “villain,” and a lawyer can not risk his client being deemed the “villain” in the eyes of the jury. Another tactic is how a lawyer chooses and highlights morals of the story he creates by using terms that don’t have negative connotations when describing their client. If a client is guilty it is difficult to use words that are positive, but they can at least use ones that are not negative (Rudrich and Koenig). These methods help a lawyer to get the jury on the side of their client.

The fact that white collar crimes in the United States are not being punished as harshly as blue collar crimes is, in my opinion, a very important issue. While researching this I learned about how consequential this issue is, and how it is not the fault of the laws, it is the ethical decision making of the people tasked with deciding the punishments. For my project, I will create surveys to send out to people I know inquiring about their responses if they were in the jury. I will then use the data collected in collaboration with my research to create a project representative of the ethical decision making of the public. This is very significant because it affects the public. People are not only the problem and the victim, but they can be the solution.

Works Cited

“§ 18.2-95. Grand Larceny Defined; How Punished.” Code of Virginia, Virginia’s Legislative Information System, 2018. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/18.2-95/ Accessed 22 April 2020.

Curry, Brett, and Banks Miller. “It’s Not Just Paul Manafort. This is Why White-Collar Criminals Often Evade Harsh Punishment.” The Washington Post, 18 March 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/18/its-not-just-paul-manafort-this-is-why-white-collar-criminals-often-evade-harsh-punishment/. Accessed 9 April 2020.

Gayla, Marella. “What’s the Punishment for Theft? Depends On What State You’re In.” 9 August 2019. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-punishment-for-theft-depends-on-what-state-you-re-in. Accessed 6 April 2020.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. J. B Lippincott & Co. 11 July 1960.

“Man Sentenced to More Than 15 Years in Prison for Multiple Armed Bank Robberies.” WTKR, 24 July 2018. https://www.wtkr.com/2018/10/03/man-sentenced-to-more-than-15-years-in-prison-for-multiple-armed-bank-robberies. Accessed 8 April 2020.

McKey, Bracken. Personal Interview. 21 April 2020.

Rudich, Eric, and Mary Beth Koenig. “The Moral Foundation of Jurors.” Claims and Litigation Magazine, 19 June 2017, https://clmmag.theclm.org/home/article/The-Moral-Foundation-of-Jurors. Accessed 10 April 2020.

Smith, Rain. “Charity Official Charged with Embezzlement of Bristol Library Funds.” Times News, 22 August 2014. https://www.timesnews.net/News/2014/08/21/Charity-official-charged-with-embezzlement-of-Bristol-library-funds Accessed 8 April 2020.

Soares, John. “Former Library Charity Director to Prison for Embezzlement.” WCYB, 25 August 2015. https://wcyb.com/news/virginia-news/former-library-charity-director-to-prison-for-embezzlement. Accessed 8 April 2020.

Wildeus, Jessica. “Virginia’s Petty Theft and Larceny Laws: A Quick Guide.” Tingen Williams, 17 March 2020. https://tingenwilliams.com/2019/petty-theft-and-larceny-virginia/34932 Accessed 21 April 2020.

Louise Williamson

Mr Caballero

English 8

3 May 2020

Why Sentences Vary for Different Types of Larceny

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” (Lee 30) says Atticus Finch, one of my inspirations. This is a valuable lesson that I try to apply in my everyday life, and I think people need to remember in the courtroom. The goal of my project was to figure out why white collar crimes are not punished as harshly as blue collar crimes, and to learn about the role of ethics in the jury’s decision. I found that it is not the laws that are causing this problem, it is the people interpreting them. To accomplish this I needed background information to narrow down my hypotheses, so I performed some research about the laws in different states, and chose Virginia as the example used in the illustrations of the concepts, because it has the lowest felony minimum,which is the amount of money one must steal for the crime to be considered a felony, in the country. With that information I was able to answer my guiding question, how ethics play a role in adjudicating different types of larceny.

The retail industry of America loses approximately 30 billion dollars each year because of felony theft alone, according to the National Retail Federation (Gayla). Larceny is a paramount issue in the United States, and its judicious prosecution is necessary for our functioning society. “Larceny” is a broad term, and encompasses many different types of crimes, from street crimes like theft to whitecollar crimes like embezzlement. White collar crimes are crimes committed in a professional environment and usually by someone of a higher social standing, as opposed to blue collar crimes that are usually committed in person and typically by those of a lower social standing. The laws of many states say that the penalty should be uniform regardless of the type of larceny, however, when crimes come to court that is not always the case.

Before this issue can be addressed, one must analyze a bit more what larceny is. Larceny is simply the unlawful taking of someone else’s property, whether it be money, personal items, or even livestock. There are a few larcenous categories, and they are based on how much money is stolen or how much the property stolen is worth. The first is a misdemeanor. A crime is classified as a misdemeanor if the amount taken was less than that state’s felony minimum, which in Virginia is $200. Anything more than that is considered a felony, including the second and third categories. The second is petty larceny, which is if the amount is more than $200 but less than $500. Any larcenous crime committed where more than $500 is taken falls under the third category, grand larceny (Gayla). Penalties for the crimes are different based on which category a crime falls under. The Virginia laws dictate that a misdemeanor or petty larceny must be penalized with up to one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $2500 (Wildeus). According to the legal statute of Virginia, if someone commits grand larceny, they could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison, and/or given a fine of $2500 accompanied by up to a year in prison. These laws are for any form of larceny. The laws of Virginia ensure that the penalties are the same.

The following are two cases of crimes both committed in Virginia, one a grand larceny, theft, case, and the latter an embezzlement case. Two years ago, Marquis Larosa Buckley (41 in 2018) conspired with Austin Lee Howard (35 in 2018) to rob a PNC Bank in Virginia Beach, from which they stole $8404. According to a local news source, the two men had stolen from a Fulton Bank and an SPE Credit Union shortly before moving on to the PNC. While inside the Virginia Beach bank, Buckley fired a gun at the wall to force the tellers to turn over the money faster. He also set a fake bomb with the sole purpose to be a diversion so he had time to escape to the waiting getaway car being driven by his accomplice (“Man”). In comparison to this theft case, Anita Foster-Machado (50 at the time of the crime) was convicted of embezzling $20,000 in 2014. She was the director of new development of the Bristol Virginia Public Library Foundation, and her role was to oversee new donations. It was found that she had been using the library foundation’s credit card for personal purposes, from early 2010 to June 2013. Foster-Machado had used the credit card to purchase clothing, and two and a half years’ worth of Botox treatments before she was caught (Smith). These two crimes with similar damages were not treated as similar by the court. Though Buckley had stolen from multiple banks, the amount he took only came out to a total of about $16,500 (“Man”), and he was faced with a greater sentence than Foster-Machado, who took a greater amount of money. Buckley was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and so was Howard (“Man”). Foster-Machado was originally sentenced to 20 years, but 18 of them were suspended leaving her with just two years in jail. She was also charged with a total of six different felony counts, but four of them were dropped (Soares). In summary, Foster Machado embezzled more money than Buckley stole, and she received a much lesser sentence.

Overall, 37 percent of white collar criminals, who are convicted in the United States do not go to prison at all. To contrast, only nine percent of those convicted of narcotics offenses stay out of prison (Curry and Miller). The political environment including national administrations influence the length of sentences of particular crimes. On average, with Republican Congress control and an assumingly Democratic president, white collar crime sentences are 24 per cent shorter than with a Republican president. This indicates that only the serious cases are chosen for prosecution under Republican administrations, begetting higher sentences on average (Curry and Miller).

An example of a short sentence for a pronounced embezzlement would be the Paul Manafort case. On 21 August, 2018, Paul Manafort was convicted of 8 counts of bank and tax fraud totalling somewhere between 12 and 30 million dollars. In March 2018 he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, when he could have received 24. The judge in charge of prosecuting this crime, Judge Ellis, says this was because of his “otherwise blameless life.” In my opinion this is unfair because this trial was not about past crimes and the current crime at hand. However, one should address some logical reasons why this can happen. For example, many white collar crimes involve extremely complicated accounting schemes, without witnesses, often making them difficult to understand and prove (Curry and Miller). Of course, it is not only the professional lawyers and judges who make the decision. All criminals have a constitutional right to testify before a jury of their peers.

The jury is a group of people who help decide a defendant’s sentence. The jury is made up of twelve people if the crime is felonious, and only six if it is a misdemeanor (McKey). Studies show that the jury’s decision is based on each juror's moral code. According to a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, Johnathon Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” there are five decision making foundations, and the decision is based on how sensitive someone is to them. The first is care and harm, which concerns whether or not the defendant’s actions were in the interest of the public. The second is about fairness and the expectation that in doing something selfless for someone else, they will do something for you in return. In the case of the courtroom, jury members ask themselves, ‘did the defendant intend to level out the playing field, or was the crime committed to get an unfair advantage?’ The third is loyalty and betrayal, for example, wanting to fit in and betraying someone to do so. The fourth is about authority and whether or not the defendant respected the rights that go along with someone’s position in a professional or social hierarchy. Finally, the fifth is simply the disgust the juror feels (Rudrich and Koenig). One might conclude that the disgust at the picture an attorney paints of something violent or causing injury will then be focused on the guilty party. These five points are the foundations of the jury’s ethical decision making.

The actions of the lawyers may affect the outcome in many ways. Lawyers may use different tactics to get a juror on their client’s side. One method is to tell the case in story form so that the information is not twisted when the juror inherently organizes it into a story himself to better understand (Rudrich and Koenig). When the juror does this, they may choose to identify a “victim” and “villain,” and a lawyer can not risk his client being deemed the “villain” in the eyes of the jury. Another tactic is how a lawyer chooses and highlights morals of the story he creates by using terms that don’t have negative connotations when describing their client. If a client is guilty it is difficult to use words that are positive, but they can at least use ones that are not negative (Rudrich and Koenig). These methods help a lawyer to get the jury on the side of their client.

The fact that white collar crimes in the United States are not being punished as harshly as blue collar crimes is, in my opinion, a very important issue. While researching this I learned about how consequential this issue is, and how it is not the fault of the laws, it is the ethical decision making of the people tasked with deciding the punishments. For my project, I will create surveys to send out to people I know inquiring about their responses if they were in the jury. I will then use the data collected in collaboration with my research to create a project representative of the ethical decision making of the public. This is very significant because it affects the public. People are not only the problem and the victim, but they can be the solution.

Works Cited

“§ 18.2-95. Grand Larceny Defined; How Punished.” Code of Virginia, Virginia’s Legislative Information System, 2018. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/18.2-95/ Accessed 22 April 2020.

Curry, Brett, and Banks Miller. “It’s Not Just Paul Manafort. This is Why White-Collar Criminals Often Evade Harsh Punishment.” The Washington Post, 18 March 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/18/its-not-just-paul-manafort-this-is-why-white-collar-criminals-often-evade-harsh-punishment/. Accessed 9 April 2020.

Gayla, Marella. “What’s the Punishment for Theft? Depends On What State You’re In.” 9 August 2019. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-punishment-for-theft-depends-on-what-state-you-re-in. Accessed 6 April 2020.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. J. B Lippincott & Co. 11 July 1960.

“Man Sentenced to More Than 15 Years in Prison for Multiple Armed Bank Robberies.” WTKR, 24 July 2018. https://www.wtkr.com/2018/10/03/man-sentenced-to-more-than-15-years-in-prison-for-multiple-armed-bank-robberies. Accessed 8 April 2020.

McKey, Bracken. Personal Interview. 21 April 2020.

Rudich, Eric, and Mary Beth Koenig. “The Moral Foundation of Jurors.” Claims and Litigation Magazine, 19 June 2017, https://clmmag.theclm.org/home/article/The-Moral-Foundation-of-Jurors. Accessed 10 April 2020.

Smith, Rain. “Charity Official Charged with Embezzlement of Bristol Library Funds.” Times News, 22 August 2014. https://www.timesnews.net/News/2014/08/21/Charity-official-charged-with-embezzlement-of-Bristol-library-funds Accessed 8 April 2020.

Soares, John. “Former Library Charity Director to Prison for Embezzlement.” WCYB, 25 August 2015. https://wcyb.com/news/virginia-news/former-library-charity-director-to-prison-for-embezzlement. Accessed 8 April 2020.

Wildeus, Jessica. “Virginia’s Petty Theft and Larceny Laws: A Quick Guide.” Tingen Williams, 17 March 2020. https://tingenwilliams.com/2019/petty-theft-and-larceny-virginia/34932 Accessed 21 April 2020.

Louise Williamson

Mr Caballero

English 8

3 May 2020

Why Sentences Vary for Different Types of Larceny

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” (Lee 30) says Atticus Finch, one of my inspirations. This is a valuable lesson that I try to apply in my everyday life, and I think people need to remember in the courtroom. The goal of my project was to figure out why white collar crimes are not punished as harshly as blue collar crimes, and to learn about the role of ethics in the jury’s decision. I found that it is not the laws that are causing this problem, it is the people interpreting them. To accomplish this I needed background information to narrow down my hypotheses, so I performed some research about the laws in different states, and chose Virginia as the example used in the illustrations of the concepts, because it has the lowest felony minimum,which is the amount of money one must steal for the crime to be considered a felony, in the country. With that information I was able to answer my guiding question, how ethics play a role in adjudicating different types of larceny.

The retail industry of America loses approximately 30 billion dollars each year because of felony theft alone, according to the National Retail Federation (Gayla). Larceny is a paramount issue in the United States, and its judicious prosecution is necessary for our functioning society. “Larceny” is a broad term, and encompasses many different types of crimes, from street crimes like theft to whitecollar crimes like embezzlement. White collar crimes are crimes committed in a professional environment and usually by someone of a higher social standing, as opposed to blue collar crimes that are usually committed in person and typically by those of a lower social standing. The laws of many states say that the penalty should be uniform regardless of the type of larceny, however, when crimes come to court that is not always the case.

Before this issue can be addressed, one must analyze a bit more what larceny is. Larceny is simply the unlawful taking of someone else’s property, whether it be money, personal items, or even livestock. There are a few larcenous categories, and they are based on how much money is stolen or how much the property stolen is worth. The first is a misdemeanor. A crime is classified as a misdemeanor if the amount taken was less than that state’s felony minimum, which in Virginia is $200. Anything more than that is considered a felony, including the second and third categories. The second is petty larceny, which is if the amount is more than $200 but less than $500. Any larcenous crime committed where more than $500 is taken falls under the third category, grand larceny (Gayla). Penalties for the crimes are different based on which category a crime falls under. The Virginia laws dictate that a misdemeanor or petty larceny must be penalized with up to one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $2500 (Wildeus). According to the legal statute of Virginia, if someone commits grand larceny, they could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison, and/or given a fine of $2500 accompanied by up to a year in prison. These laws are for any form of larceny. The laws of Virginia ensure that the penalties are the same.

The following are two cases of crimes both committed in Virginia, one a grand larceny, theft, case, and the latter an embezzlement case. Two years ago, Marquis Larosa Buckley (41 in 2018) conspired with Austin Lee Howard (35 in 2018) to rob a PNC Bank in Virginia Beach, from which they stole $8404. According to a local news source, the two men had stolen from a Fulton Bank and an SPE Credit Union shortly before moving on to the PNC. While inside the Virginia Beach bank, Buckley fired a gun at the wall to force the tellers to turn over the money faster. He also set a fake bomb with the sole purpose to be a diversion so he had time to escape to the waiting getaway car being driven by his accomplice (“Man”). In comparison to this theft case, Anita Foster-Machado (50 at the time of the crime) was convicted of embezzling $20,000 in 2014. She was the director of new development of the Bristol Virginia Public Library Foundation, and her role was to oversee new donations. It was found that she had been using the library foundation’s credit card for personal purposes, from early 2010 to June 2013. Foster-Machado had used the credit card to purchase clothing, and two and a half years’ worth of Botox treatments before she was caught (Smith). These two crimes with similar damages were not treated as similar by the court. Though Buckley had stolen from multiple banks, the amount he took only came out to a total of about $16,500 (“Man”), and he was faced with a greater sentence than Foster-Machado, who took a greater amount of money. Buckley was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and so was Howard (“Man”). Foster-Machado was originally sentenced to 20 years, but 18 of them were suspended leaving her with just two years in jail. She was also charged with a total of six different felony counts, but four of them were dropped (Soares). In summary, Foster Machado embezzled more money than Buckley stole, and she received a much lesser sentence.

Overall, 37 percent of white collar criminals, who are convicted in the United States do not go to prison at all. To contrast, only nine percent of those convicted of narcotics offenses stay out of prison (Curry and Miller). The political environment including national administrations influence the length of sentences of particular crimes. On average, with Republican Congress control and an assumingly Democratic president, white collar crime sentences are 24 per cent shorter than with a Republican president. This indicates that only the serious cases are chosen for prosecution under Republican administrations, begetting higher sentences on average (Curry and Miller).

An example of a short sentence for a pronounced embezzlement would be the Paul Manafort case. On 21 August, 2018, Paul Manafort was convicted of 8 counts of bank and tax fraud totalling somewhere between 12 and 30 million dollars. In March 2018 he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, when he could have received 24. The judge in charge of prosecuting this crime, Judge Ellis, says this was because of his “otherwise blameless life.” In my opinion this is unfair because this trial was not about past crimes and the current crime at hand. However, one should address some logical reasons why this can happen. For example, many white collar crimes involve extremely complicated accounting schemes, without witnesses, often making them difficult to understand and prove (Curry and Miller). Of course, it is not only the professional lawyers and judges who make the decision. All criminals have a constitutional right to testify before a jury of their peers.

The jury is a group of people who help decide a defendant’s sentence. The jury is made up of twelve people if the crime is felonious, and only six if it is a misdemeanor (McKey). Studies show that the jury’s decision is based on each juror's moral code. According to a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, Johnathon Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” there are five decision making foundations, and the decision is based on how sensitive someone is to them. The first is care and harm, which concerns whether or not the defendant’s actions were in the interest of the public. The second is about fairness and the expectation that in doing something selfless for someone else, they will do something for you in return. In the case of the courtroom, jury members ask themselves, ‘did the defendant intend to level out the playing field, or was the crime committed to get an unfair advantage?’ The third is loyalty and betrayal, for example, wanting to fit in and betraying someone to do so. The fourth is about authority and whether or not the defendant respected the rights that go along with someone’s position in a professional or social hierarchy. Finally, the fifth is simply the disgust the juror feels (Rudrich and Koenig). One might conclude that the disgust at the picture an attorney paints of something violent or causing injury will then be focused on the guilty party. These five points are the foundations of the jury’s ethical decision making.

The actions of the lawyers may affect the outcome in many ways. Lawyers may use different tactics to get a juror on their client’s side. One method is to tell the case in story form so that the information is not twisted when the juror inherently organizes it into a story himself to better understand (Rudrich and Koenig). When the juror does this, they may choose to identify a “victim” and “villain,” and a lawyer can not risk his client being deemed the “villain” in the eyes of the jury. Another tactic is how a lawyer chooses and highlights morals of the story he creates by using terms that don’t have negative connotations when describing their client. If a client is guilty it is difficult to use words that are positive, but they can at least use ones that are not negative (Rudrich and Koenig). These methods help a lawyer to get the jury on the side of their client.

The fact that white collar crimes in the United States are not being punished as harshly as blue collar crimes is, in my opinion, a very important issue. While researching this I learned about how consequential this issue is, and how it is not the fault of the laws, it is the ethical decision making of the people tasked with deciding the punishments. For my project, I will create surveys to send out to people I know inquiring about their responses if they were in the jury. I will then use the data collected in collaboration with my research to create a project representative of the ethical decision making of the public. This is very significant because it affects the public. People are not only the problem and the victim, but they can be the solution.

Works Cited

“§ 18.2-95. Grand Larceny Defined; How Punished.” Code of Virginia, Virginia’s Legislative Information System, 2018. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/18.2-95/ Accessed 22 April 2020.

Curry, Brett, and Banks Miller. “It’s Not Just Paul Manafort. This is Why White-Collar Criminals Often Evade Harsh Punishment.” The Washington Post, 18 March 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/18/its-not-just-paul-manafort-this-is-why-white-collar-criminals-often-evade-harsh-punishment/. Accessed 9 April 2020.

Gayla, Marella. “What’s the Punishment for Theft? Depends On What State You’re In.” 9 August 2019. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-punishment-for-theft-depends-on-what-state-you-re-in. Accessed 6 April 2020.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. J. B Lippincott & Co. 11 July 1960.

“Man Sentenced to More Than 15 Years in Prison for Multiple Armed Bank Robberies.” WTKR, 24 July 2018. https://www.wtkr.com/2018/10/03/man-sentenced-to-more-than-15-years-in-prison-for-multiple-armed-bank-robberies. Accessed 8 April 2020.

McKey, Bracken. Personal Interview. 21 April 2020.

Rudich, Eric, and Mary Beth Koenig. “The Moral Foundation of Jurors.” Claims and Litigation Magazine, 19 June 2017, https://clmmag.theclm.org/home/article/The-Moral-Foundation-of-Jurors. Accessed 10 April 2020.

Smith, Rain. “Charity Official Charged with Embezzlement of Bristol Library Funds.” Times News, 22 August 2014. https://www.timesnews.net/News/2014/08/21/Charity-official-charged-with-embezzlement-of-Bristol-library-funds Accessed 8 April 2020.

Soares, John. “Former Library Charity Director to Prison for Embezzlement.” WCYB, 25 August 2015. https://wcyb.com/news/virginia-news/former-library-charity-director-to-prison-for-embezzlement. Accessed 8 April 2020.

Wildeus, Jessica. “Virginia’s Petty Theft and Larceny Laws: A Quick Guide.” Tingen Williams, 17 March 2020. https://tingenwilliams.com/2019/petty-theft-and-larceny-virginia/34932 Accessed 21 April 2020.

Louise Williamson

Mr Caballero

English 8

3 May 2020

Why Sentences Vary for Different Types of Larceny

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” (Lee 30) says Atticus Finch, one of my inspirations. This is a valuable lesson that I try to apply in my everyday life, and I think people need to remember in the courtroom. The goal of my project was to figure out why white collar crimes are not punished as harshly as blue collar crimes, and to learn about the role of ethics in the jury’s decision. I found that it is not the laws that are causing this problem, it is the people interpreting them. To accomplish this I needed background information to narrow down my hypotheses, so I performed some research about the laws in different states, and chose Virginia as the example used in the illustrations of the concepts, because it has the lowest felony minimum,which is the amount of money one must steal for the crime to be considered a felony, in the country. With that information I was able to answer my guiding question, how ethics play a role in adjudicating different types of larceny.

The retail industry of America loses approximately 30 billion dollars each year because of felony theft alone, according to the National Retail Federation (Gayla). Larceny is a paramount issue in the United States, and its judicious prosecution is necessary for our functioning society. “Larceny” is a broad term, and encompasses many different types of crimes, from street crimes like theft to whitecollar crimes like embezzlement. White collar crimes are crimes committed in a professional environment and usually by someone of a higher social standing, as opposed to blue collar crimes that are usually committed in person and typically by those of a lower social standing. The laws of many states say that the penalty should be uniform regardless of the type of larceny, however, when crimes come to court that is not always the case.

Before this issue can be addressed, one must analyze a bit more what larceny is. Larceny is simply the unlawful taking of someone else’s property, whether it be money, personal items, or even livestock. There are a few larcenous categories, and they are based on how much money is stolen or how much the property stolen is worth. The first is a misdemeanor. A crime is classified as a misdemeanor if the amount taken was less than that state’s felony minimum, which in Virginia is $200. Anything more than that is considered a felony, including the second and third categories. The second is petty larceny, which is if the amount is more than $200 but less than $500. Any larcenous crime committed where more than $500 is taken falls under the third category, grand larceny (Gayla). Penalties for the crimes are different based on which category a crime falls under. The Virginia laws dictate that a misdemeanor or petty larceny must be penalized with up to one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $2500 (Wildeus). According to the legal statute of Virginia, if someone commits grand larceny, they could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison, and/or given a fine of $2500 accompanied by up to a year in prison. These laws are for any form of larceny. The laws of Virginia ensure that the penalties are the same.

The following are two cases of crimes both committed in Virginia, one a grand larceny, theft, case, and the latter an embezzlement case. Two years ago, Marquis Larosa Buckley (41 in 2018) conspired with Austin Lee Howard (35 in 2018) to rob a PNC Bank in Virginia Beach, from which they stole $8404. According to a local news source, the two men had stolen from a Fulton Bank and an SPE Credit Union shortly before moving on to the PNC. While inside the Virginia Beach bank, Buckley fired a gun at the wall to force the tellers to turn over the money faster. He also set a fake bomb with the sole purpose to be a diversion so he had time to escape to the waiting getaway car being driven by his accomplice (“Man”). In comparison to this theft case, Anita Foster-Machado (50 at the time of the crime) was convicted of embezzling $20,000 in 2014. She was the director of new development of the Bristol Virginia Public Library Foundation, and her role was to oversee new donations. It was found that she had been using the library foundation’s credit card for personal purposes, from early 2010 to June 2013. Foster-Machado had used the credit card to purchase clothing, and two and a half years’ worth of Botox treatments before she was caught (Smith). These two crimes with similar damages were not treated as similar by the court. Though Buckley had stolen from multiple banks, the amount he took only came out to a total of about $16,500 (“Man”), and he was faced with a greater sentence than Foster-Machado, who took a greater amount of money. Buckley was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and so was Howard (“Man”). Foster-Machado was originally sentenced to 20 years, but 18 of them were suspended leaving her with just two years in jail. She was also charged with a total of six different felony counts, but four of them were dropped (Soares). In summary, Foster Machado embezzled more money than Buckley stole, and she received a much lesser sentence.

Overall, 37 percent of white collar criminals, who are convicted in the United States do not go to prison at all. To contrast, only nine percent of those convicted of narcotics offenses stay out of prison (Curry and Miller). The political environment including national administrations influence the length of sentences of particular crimes. On average, with Republican Congress control and an assumingly Democratic president, white collar crime sentences are 24 per cent shorter than with a Republican president. This indicates that only the serious cases are chosen for prosecution under Republican administrations, begetting higher sentences on average (Curry and Miller).

An example of a short sentence for a pronounced embezzlement would be the Paul Manafort case. On 21 August, 2018, Paul Manafort was convicted of 8 counts of bank and tax fraud totalling somewhere between 12 and 30 million dollars. In March 2018 he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, when he could have received 24. The judge in charge of prosecuting this crime, Judge Ellis, says this was because of his “otherwise blameless life.” In my opinion this is unfair because this trial was not about past crimes and the current crime at hand. However, one should address some logical reasons why this can happen. For example, many white collar crimes involve extremely complicated accounting schemes, without witnesses, often making them difficult to understand and prove (Curry and Miller). Of course, it is not only the professional lawyers and judges who make the decision. All criminals have a constitutional right to testify before a jury of their peers.

The jury is a group of people who help decide a defendant’s sentence. The jury is made up of twelve people if the crime is felonious, and only six if it is a misdemeanor (McKey). Studies show that the jury’s decision is based on each juror's moral code. According to a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, Johnathon Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” there are five decision making foundations, and the decision is based on how sensitive someone is to them. The first is care and harm, which concerns whether or not the defendant’s actions were in the interest of the public. The second is about fairness and the expectation that in doing something selfless for someone else, they will do something for you in return. In the case of the courtroom, jury members ask themselves, ‘did the defendant intend to level out the playing field, or was the crime committed to get an unfair advantage?’ The third is loyalty and betrayal, for example, wanting to fit in and betraying someone to do so. The fourth is about authority and whether or not the defendant respected the rights that go along with someone’s position in a professional or social hierarchy. Finally, the fifth is simply the disgust the juror feels (Rudrich and Koenig). One might conclude that the disgust at the picture an attorney paints of something violent or causing injury will then be focused on the guilty party. These five points are the foundations of the jury’s ethical decision making.

The actions of the lawyers may affect the outcome in many ways. Lawyers may use different tactics to get a juror on their client’s side. One method is to tell the case in story form so that the information is not twisted when the juror inherently organizes it into a story himself to better understand (Rudrich and Koenig). When the juror does this, they may choose to identify a “victim” and “villain,” and a lawyer can not risk his client being deemed the “villain” in the eyes of the jury. Another tactic is how a lawyer chooses and highlights morals of the story he creates by using terms that don’t have negative connotations when describing their client. If a client is guilty it is difficult to use words that are positive, but they can at least use ones that are not negative (Rudrich and Koenig). These methods help a lawyer to get the jury on the side of their client.

The fact that white collar crimes in the United States are not being punished as harshly as blue collar crimes is, in my opinion, a very important issue. While researching this I learned about how consequential this issue is, and how it is not the fault of the laws, it is the ethical decision making of the people tasked with deciding the punishments. For my project, I will create surveys to send out to people I know inquiring about their responses if they were in the jury. I will then use the data collected in collaboration with my research to create a project representative of the ethical decision making of the public. This is very significant because it affects the public. People are not only the problem and the victim, but they can be the solution.

Works Cited

“§ 18.2-95. Grand Larceny Defined; How Punished.” Code of Virginia, Virginia’s Legislative Information System, 2018. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/18.2-95/ Accessed 22 April 2020.

Curry, Brett, and Banks Miller. “It’s Not Just Paul Manafort. This is Why White-Collar Criminals Often Evade Harsh Punishment.” The Washington Post, 18 March 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/18/its-not-just-paul-manafort-this-is-why-white-collar-criminals-often-evade-harsh-punishment/. Accessed 9 April 2020.

Gayla, Marella. “What’s the Punishment for Theft? Depends On What State You’re In.” 9 August 2019. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-punishment-for-theft-depends-on-what-state-you-re-in. Accessed 6 April 2020.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. J. B Lippincott & Co. 11 July 1960.

“Man Sentenced to More Than 15 Years in Prison for Multiple Armed Bank Robberies.” WTKR, 24 July 2018. https://www.wtkr.com/2018/10/03/man-sentenced-to-more-than-15-years-in-prison-for-multiple-armed-bank-robberies. Accessed 8 April 2020.

McKey, Bracken. Personal Interview. 21 April 2020.

Rudich, Eric, and Mary Beth Koenig. “The Moral Foundation of Jurors.” Claims and Litigation Magazine, 19 June 2017, https://clmmag.theclm.org/home/article/The-Moral-Foundation-of-Jurors. Accessed 10 April 2020.

Smith, Rain. “Charity Official Charged with Embezzlement of Bristol Library Funds.” Times News, 22 August 2014. https://www.timesnews.net/News/2014/08/21/Charity-official-charged-with-embezzlement-of-Bristol-library-funds Accessed 8 April 2020.

Soares, John. “Former Library Charity Director to Prison for Embezzlement.” WCYB, 25 August 2015. https://wcyb.com/news/virginia-news/former-library-charity-director-to-prison-for-embezzlement. Accessed 8 April 2020.

Wildeus, Jessica. “Virginia’s Petty Theft and Larceny Laws: A Quick Guide.” Tingen Williams, 17 March 2020. https://tingenwilliams.com/2019/petty-theft-and-larceny-virginia/34932 Accessed 21 April 2020.

Louise Williamson

Mr Caballero

English 8

3 May 2020

Why Sentences Vary for Different Types of Larceny

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” (Lee 30) says Atticus Finch, one of my inspirations. This is a valuable lesson that I try to apply in my everyday life, and I think people need to remember in the courtroom. The goal of my project was to figure out why white collar crimes are not punished as harshly as blue collar crimes, and to learn about the role of ethics in the jury’s decision. I found that it is not the laws that are causing this problem, it is the people interpreting them. To accomplish this I needed background information to narrow down my hypotheses, so I performed some research about the laws in different states, and chose Virginia as the example used in the illustrations of the concepts, because it has the lowest felony minimum,which is the amount of money one must steal for the crime to be considered a felony, in the country. With that information I was able to answer my guiding question, how ethics play a role in adjudicating different types of larceny.

The retail industry of America loses approximately 30 billion dollars each year because of felony theft alone, according to the National Retail Federation (Gayla). Larceny is a paramount issue in the United States, and its judicious prosecution is necessary for our functioning society. “Larceny” is a broad term, and encompasses many different types of crimes, from street crimes like theft to whitecollar crimes like embezzlement. White collar crimes are crimes committed in a professional environment and usually by someone of a higher social standing, as opposed to blue collar crimes that are usually committed in person and typically by those of a lower social standing. The laws of many states say that the penalty should be uniform regardless of the type of larceny, however, when crimes come to court that is not always the case.

Before this issue can be addressed, one must analyze a bit more what larceny is. Larceny is simply the unlawful taking of someone else’s property, whether it be money, personal items, or even livestock. There are a few larcenous categories, and they are based on how much money is stolen or how much the property stolen is worth. The first is a misdemeanor. A crime is classified as a misdemeanor if the amount taken was less than that state’s felony minimum, which in Virginia is $200. Anything more than that is considered a felony, including the second and third categories. The second is petty larceny, which is if the amount is more than $200 but less than $500. Any larcenous crime committed where more than $500 is taken falls under the third category, grand larceny (Gayla). Penalties for the crimes are different based on which category a crime falls under. The Virginia laws dictate that a misdemeanor or petty larceny must be penalized with up to one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $2500 (Wildeus). According to the legal statute of Virginia, if someone commits grand larceny, they could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison, and/or given a fine of $2500 accompanied by up to a year in prison. These laws are for any form of larceny. The laws of Virginia ensure that the penalties are the same.

The following are two cases of crimes both committed in Virginia, one a grand larceny, theft, case, and the latter an embezzlement case. Two years ago, Marquis Larosa Buckley (41 in 2018) conspired with Austin Lee Howard (35 in 2018) to rob a PNC Bank in Virginia Beach, from which they stole $8404. According to a local news source, the two men had stolen from a Fulton Bank and an SPE Credit Union shortly before moving on to the PNC. While inside the Virginia Beach bank, Buckley fired a gun at the wall to force the tellers to turn over the money faster. He also set a fake bomb with the sole purpose to be a diversion so he had time to escape to the waiting getaway car being driven by his accomplice (“Man”). In comparison to this theft case, Anita Foster-Machado (50 at the time of the crime) was convicted of embezzling $20,000 in 2014. She was the director of new development of the Bristol Virginia Public Library Foundation, and her role was to oversee new donations. It was found that she had been using the library foundation’s credit card for personal purposes, from early 2010 to June 2013. Foster-Machado had used the credit card to purchase clothing, and two and a half years’ worth of Botox treatments before she was caught (Smith). These two crimes with similar damages were not treated as similar by the court. Though Buckley had stolen from multiple banks, the amount he took only came out to a total of about $16,500 (“Man”), and he was faced with a greater sentence than Foster-Machado, who took a greater amount of money. Buckley was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and so was Howard (“Man”). Foster-Machado was originally sentenced to 20 years, but 18 of them were suspended leaving her with just two years in jail. She was also charged with a total of six different felony counts, but four of them were dropped (Soares). In summary, Foster Machado embezzled more money than Buckley stole, and she received a much lesser sentence.

Overall, 37 percent of white collar criminals, who are convicted in the United States do not go to prison at all. To contrast, only nine percent of those convicted of narcotics offenses stay out of prison (Curry and Miller). The political environment including national administrations influence the length of sentences of particular crimes. On average, with Republican Congress control and an assumingly Democratic president, white collar crime sentences are 24 per cent shorter than with a Republican president. This indicates that only the serious cases are chosen for prosecution under Republican administrations, begetting higher sentences on average (Curry and Miller).

An example of a short sentence for a pronounced embezzlement would be the Paul Manafort case. On 21 August, 2018, Paul Manafort was convicted of 8 counts of bank and tax fraud totalling somewhere between 12 and 30 million dollars. In March 2018 he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, when he could have received 24. The judge in charge of prosecuting this crime, Judge Ellis, says this was because of his “otherwise blameless life.” In my opinion this is unfair because this trial was not about past crimes and the current crime at hand. However, one should address some logical reasons why this can happen. For example, many white collar crimes involve extremely complicated accounting schemes, without witnesses, often making them difficult to understand and prove (Curry and Miller). Of course, it is not only the professional lawyers and judges who make the decision. All criminals have a constitutional right to testify before a jury of their peers.

The jury is a group of people who help decide a defendant’s sentence. The jury is made up of twelve people if the crime is felonious, and only six if it is a misdemeanor (McKey). Studies show that the jury’s decision is based on each juror's moral code. According to a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, Johnathon Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” there are five decision making foundations, and the decision is based on how sensitive someone is to them. The first is care and harm, which concerns whether or not the defendant’s actions were in the interest of the public. The second is about fairness and the expectation that in doing something selfless for someone else, they will do something for you in return. In the case of the courtroom, jury members ask themselves, ‘did the defendant intend to level out the playing field, or was the crime committed to get an unfair advantage?’ The third is loyalty and betrayal, for example, wanting to fit in and betraying someone to do so. The fourth is about authority and whether or not the defendant respected the rights that go along with someone’s position in a professional or social hierarchy. Finally, the fifth is simply the disgust the juror feels (Rudrich and Koenig). One might conclude that the disgust at the picture an attorney paints of something violent or causing injury will then be focused on the guilty party. These five points are the foundations of the jury’s ethical decision making.

The actions of the lawyers may affect the outcome in many ways. Lawyers may use different tactics to get a juror on their client’s side. One method is to tell the case in story form so that the information is not twisted when the juror inherently organizes it into a story himself to better understand (Rudrich and Koenig). When the juror does this, they may choose to identify a “victim” and “villain,” and a lawyer can not risk his client being deemed the “villain” in the eyes of the jury. Another tactic is how a lawyer chooses and highlights morals of the story he creates by using terms that don’t have negative connotations when describing their client. If a client is guilty it is difficult to use words that are positive, but they can at least use ones that are not negative (Rudrich and Koenig). These methods help a lawyer to get the jury on the side of their client.

The fact that white collar crimes in the United States are not being punished as harshly as blue collar crimes is, in my opinion, a very important issue. While researching this I learned about how consequential this issue is, and how it is not the fault of the laws, it is the ethical decision making of the people tasked with deciding the punishments. For my project, I will create surveys to send out to people I know inquiring about their responses if they were in the jury. I will then use the data collected in collaboration with my research to create a project representative of the ethical decision making of the public. This is very significant because it affects the public. People are not only the problem and the victim, but they can be the solution.

Works Cited

“§ 18.2-95. Grand Larceny Defined; How Punished.” Code of Virginia, Virginia’s Legislative Information System, 2018. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/18.2-95/ Accessed 22 April 2020.

Curry, Brett, and Banks Miller. “It’s Not Just Paul Manafort. This is Why White-Collar Criminals Often Evade Harsh Punishment.” The Washington Post, 18 March 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/18/its-not-just-paul-manafort-this-is-why-white-collar-criminals-often-evade-harsh-punishment/. Accessed 9 April 2020.

Gayla, Marella. “What’s the Punishment for Theft? Depends On What State You’re In.” 9 August 2019. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-punishment-for-theft-depends-on-what-state-you-re-in. Accessed 6 April 2020.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. J. B Lippincott & Co. 11 July 1960.

“Man Sentenced to More Than 15 Years in Prison for Multiple Armed Bank Robberies.” WTKR, 24 July 2018. https://www.wtkr.com/2018/10/03/man-sentenced-to-more-than-15-years-in-prison-for-multiple-armed-bank-robberies. Accessed 8 April 2020.

McKey, Bracken. Personal Interview. 21 April 2020.

Rudich, Eric, and Mary Beth Koenig. “The Moral Foundation of Jurors.” Claims and Litigation Magazine, 19 June 2017, https://clmmag.theclm.org/home/article/The-Moral-Foundation-of-Jurors. Accessed 10 April 2020.

Smith, Rain. “Charity Official Charged with Embezzlement of Bristol Library Funds.” Times News, 22 August 2014. https://www.timesnews.net/News/2014/08/21/Charity-official-charged-with-embezzlement-of-Bristol-library-funds Accessed 8 April 2020.

Soares, John. “Former Library Charity Director to Prison for Embezzlement.” WCYB, 25 August 2015. https://wcyb.com/news/virginia-news/former-library-charity-director-to-prison-for-embezzlement. Accessed 8 April 2020.

Wildeus, Jessica. “Virginia’s Petty Theft and Larceny Laws: A Quick Guide.” Tingen Williams, 17 March 2020. https://tingenwilliams.com/2019/petty-theft-and-larceny-virginia/34932 Accessed 21 April 2020.

Louise Williamson

Mr Caballero

English 8

3 May 2020

Why Sentences Vary for Different Types of Larceny

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” (Lee 30) says Atticus Finch, one of my inspirations. This is a valuable lesson that I try to apply in my everyday life, and I think people need to remember in the courtroom. The goal of my project was to figure out why white collar crimes are not punished as harshly as blue collar crimes, and to learn about the role of ethics in the jury’s decision. I found that it is not the laws that are causing this problem, it is the people interpreting them. To accomplish this I needed background information to narrow down my hypotheses, so I performed some research about the laws in different states, and chose Virginia as the example used in the illustrations of the concepts, because it has the lowest felony minimum,which is the amount of money one must steal for the crime to be considered a felony, in the country. With that information I was able to answer my guiding question, how ethics play a role in adjudicating different types of larceny.

The retail industry of America loses approximately 30 billion dollars each year because of felony theft alone, according to the National Retail Federation (Gayla). Larceny is a paramount issue in the United States, and its judicious prosecution is necessary for our functioning society. “Larceny” is a broad term, and encompasses many different types of crimes, from street crimes like theft to whitecollar crimes like embezzlement. White collar crimes are crimes committed in a professional environment and usually by someone of a higher social standing, as opposed to blue collar crimes that are usually committed in person and typically by those of a lower social standing. The laws of many states say that the penalty should be uniform regardless of the type of larceny, however, when crimes come to court that is not always the case.

Before this issue can be addressed, one must analyze a bit more what larceny is. Larceny is simply the unlawful taking of someone else’s property, whether it be money, personal items, or even livestock. There are a few larcenous categories, and they are based on how much money is stolen or how much the property stolen is worth. The first is a misdemeanor. A crime is classified as a misdemeanor if the amount taken was less than that state’s felony minimum, which in Virginia is $200. Anything more than that is considered a felony, including the second and third categories. The second is petty larceny, which is if the amount is more than $200 but less than $500. Any larcenous crime committed where more than $500 is taken falls under the third category, grand larceny (Gayla). Penalties for the crimes are different based on which category a crime falls under. The Virginia laws dictate that a misdemeanor or petty larceny must be penalized with up to one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $2500 (Wildeus). According to the legal statute of Virginia, if someone commits grand larceny, they could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison, and/or given a fine of $2500 accompanied by up to a year in prison. These laws are for any form of larceny. The laws of Virginia ensure that the penalties are the same.

The following are two cases of crimes both committed in Virginia, one a grand larceny, theft, case, and the latter an embezzlement case. Two years ago, Marquis Larosa Buckley (41 in 2018) conspired with Austin Lee Howard (35 in 2018) to rob a PNC Bank in Virginia Beach, from which they stole $8404. According to a local news source, the two men had stolen from a Fulton Bank and an SPE Credit Union shortly before moving on to the PNC. While inside the Virginia Beach bank, Buckley fired a gun at the wall to force the tellers to turn over the money faster. He also set a fake bomb with the sole purpose to be a diversion so he had time to escape to the waiting getaway car being driven by his accomplice (“Man”). In comparison to this theft case, Anita Foster-Machado (50 at the time of the crime) was convicted of embezzling $20,000 in 2014. She was the director of new development of the Bristol Virginia Public Library Foundation, and her role was to oversee new donations. It was found that she had been using the library foundation’s credit card for personal purposes, from early 2010 to June 2013. Foster-Machado had used the credit card to purchase clothing, and two and a half years’ worth of Botox treatments before she was caught (Smith). These two crimes with similar damages were not treated as similar by the court. Though Buckley had stolen from multiple banks, the amount he took only came out to a total of about $16,500 (“Man”), and he was faced with a greater sentence than Foster-Machado, who took a greater amount of money. Buckley was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and so was Howard (“Man”). Foster-Machado was originally sentenced to 20 years, but 18 of them were suspended leaving her with just two years in jail. She was also charged with a total of six different felony counts, but four of them were dropped (Soares). In summary, Foster Machado embezzled more money than Buckley stole, and she received a much lesser sentence.

Overall, 37 percent of white collar criminals, who are convicted in the United States do not go to prison at all. To contrast, only nine percent of those convicted of narcotics offenses stay out of prison (Curry and Miller). The political environment including national administrations influence the length of sentences of particular crimes. On average, with Republican Congress control and an assumingly Democratic president, white collar crime sentences are 24 per cent shorter than with a Republican president. This indicates that only the serious cases are chosen for prosecution under Republican administrations, begetting higher sentences on average (Curry and Miller).

An example of a short sentence for a pronounced embezzlement would be the Paul Manafort case. On 21 August, 2018, Paul Manafort was convicted of 8 counts of bank and tax fraud totalling somewhere between 12 and 30 million dollars. In March 2018 he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, when he could have received 24. The judge in charge of prosecuting this crime, Judge Ellis, says this was because of his “otherwise blameless life.” In my opinion this is unfair because this trial was not about past crimes and the current crime at hand. However, one should address some logical reasons why this can happen. For example, many white collar crimes involve extremely complicated accounting schemes, without witnesses, often making them difficult to understand and prove (Curry and Miller). Of course, it is not only the professional lawyers and judges who make the decision. All criminals have a constitutional right to testify before a jury of their peers.

The jury is a group of people who help decide a defendant’s sentence. The jury is made up of twelve people if the crime is felonious, and only six if it is a misdemeanor (McKey). Studies show that the jury’s decision is based on each juror's moral code. According to a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, Johnathon Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” there are five decision making foundations, and the decision is based on how sensitive someone is to them. The first is care and harm, which concerns whether or not the defendant’s actions were in the interest of the public. The second is about fairness and the expectation that in doing something selfless for someone else, they will do something for you in return. In the case of the courtroom, jury members ask themselves, ‘did the defendant intend to level out the playing field, or was the crime committed to get an unfair advantage?’ The third is loyalty and betrayal, for example, wanting to fit in and betraying someone to do so. The fourth is about authority and whether or not the defendant respected the rights that go along with someone’s position in a professional or social hierarchy. Finally, the fifth is simply the disgust the juror feels (Rudrich and Koenig). One might conclude that the disgust at the picture an attorney paints of something violent or causing injury will then be focused on the guilty party. These five points are the foundations of the jury’s ethical decision making.

The actions of the lawyers may affect the outcome in many ways. Lawyers may use different tactics to get a juror on their client’s side. One method is to tell the case in story form so that the information is not twisted when the juror inherently organizes it into a story himself to better understand (Rudrich and Koenig). When the juror does this, they may choose to identify a “victim” and “villain,” and a lawyer can not risk his client being deemed the “villain” in the eyes of the jury. Another tactic is how a lawyer chooses and highlights morals of the story he creates by using terms that don’t have negative connotations when describing their client. If a client is guilty it is difficult to use words that are positive, but they can at least use ones that are not negative (Rudrich and Koenig). These methods help a lawyer to get the jury on the side of their client.

The fact that white collar crimes in the United States are not being punished as harshly as blue collar crimes is, in my opinion, a very important issue. While researching this I learned about how consequential this issue is, and how it is not the fault of the laws, it is the ethical decision making of the people tasked with deciding the punishments. For my project, I will create surveys to send out to people I know inquiring about their responses if they were in the jury. I will then use the data collected in collaboration with my research to create a project representative of the ethical decision making of the public. This is very significant because it affects the public. People are not only the problem and the victim, but they can be the solution.

Works Cited

“§ 18.2-95. Grand Larceny Defined; How Punished.” Code of Virginia, Virginia’s Legislative Information System, 2018. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/18.2-95/ Accessed 22 April 2020.

Curry, Brett, and Banks Miller. “It’s Not Just Paul Manafort. This is Why White-Collar Criminals Often Evade Harsh Punishment.” The Washington Post, 18 March 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/18/its-not-just-paul-manafort-this-is-why-white-collar-criminals-often-evade-harsh-punishment/. Accessed 9 April 2020.

Gayla, Marella. “What’s the Punishment for Theft? Depends On What State You’re In.” 9 August 2019. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-punishment-for-theft-depends-on-what-state-you-re-in. Accessed 6 April 2020.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. J. B Lippincott & Co. 11 July 1960.

“Man Sentenced to More Than 15 Years in Prison for Multiple Armed Bank Robberies.” WTKR, 24 July 2018. https://www.wtkr.com/2018/10/03/man-sentenced-to-more-than-15-years-in-prison-for-multiple-armed-bank-robberies. Accessed 8 April 2020.

McKey, Bracken. Personal Interview. 21 April 2020.

Rudich, Eric, and Mary Beth Koenig. “The Moral Foundation of Jurors.” Claims and Litigation Magazine, 19 June 2017, https://clmmag.theclm.org/home/article/The-Moral-Foundation-of-Jurors. Accessed 10 April 2020.

Smith, Rain. “Charity Official Charged with Embezzlement of Bristol Library Funds.” Times News, 22 August 2014. https://www.timesnews.net/News/2014/08/21/Charity-official-charged-with-embezzlement-of-Bristol-library-funds Accessed 8 April 2020.

Soares, John. “Former Library Charity Director to Prison for Embezzlement.” WCYB, 25 August 2015. https://wcyb.com/news/virginia-news/former-library-charity-director-to-prison-for-embezzlement. Accessed 8 April 2020.

Wildeus, Jessica. “Virginia’s Petty Theft and Larceny Laws: A Quick Guide.” Tingen Williams, 17 March 2020. https://tingenwilliams.com/2019/petty-theft-and-larceny-virginia/34932 Accessed 21 April 2020.

Louise Williamson

Mr Caballero

English 8

3 May 2020

Why Sentences Vary for Different Types of Larceny

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” (Lee 30) says Atticus Finch, one of my inspirations. This is a valuable lesson that I try to apply in my everyday life, and I think people need to remember in the courtroom. The goal of my project was to figure out why white collar crimes are not punished as harshly as blue collar crimes, and to learn about the role of ethics in the jury’s decision. I found that it is not the laws that are causing this problem, it is the people interpreting them. To accomplish this I needed background information to narrow down my hypotheses, so I performed some research about the laws in different states, and chose Virginia as the example used in the illustrations of the concepts, because it has the lowest felony minimum,which is the amount of money one must steal for the crime to be considered a felony, in the country. With that information I was able to answer my guiding question, how ethics play a role in adjudicating different types of larceny.

The retail industry of America loses approximately 30 billion dollars each year because of felony theft alone, according to the National Retail Federation (Gayla). Larceny is a paramount issue in the United States, and its judicious prosecution is necessary for our functioning society. “Larceny” is a broad term, and encompasses many different types of crimes, from street crimes like theft to whitecollar crimes like embezzlement. White collar crimes are crimes committed in a professional environment and usually by someone of a higher social standing, as opposed to blue collar crimes that are usually committed in person and typically by those of a lower social standing. The laws of many states say that the penalty should be uniform regardless of the type of larceny, however, when crimes come to court that is not always the case.

Before this issue can be addressed, one must analyze a bit more what larceny is. Larceny is simply the unlawful taking of someone else’s property, whether it be money, personal items, or even livestock. There are a few larcenous categories, and they are based on how much money is stolen or how much the property stolen is worth. The first is a misdemeanor. A crime is classified as a misdemeanor if the amount taken was less than that state’s felony minimum, which in Virginia is $200. Anything more than that is considered a felony, including the second and third categories. The second is petty larceny, which is if the amount is more than $200 but less than $500. Any larcenous crime committed where more than $500 is taken falls under the third category, grand larceny (Gayla). Penalties for the crimes are different based on which category a crime falls under. The Virginia laws dictate that a misdemeanor or petty larceny must be penalized with up to one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $2500 (Wildeus). According to the legal statute of Virginia, if someone commits grand larceny, they could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison, and/or given a fine of $2500 accompanied by up to a year in prison. These laws are for any form of larceny. The laws of Virginia ensure that the penalties are the same.

The following are two cases of crimes both committed in Virginia, one a grand larceny, theft, case, and the latter an embezzlement case. Two years ago, Marquis Larosa Buckley (41 in 2018) conspired with Austin Lee Howard (35 in 2018) to rob a PNC Bank in Virginia Beach, from which they stole $8404. According to a local news source, the two men had stolen from a Fulton Bank and an SPE Credit Union shortly before moving on to the PNC. While inside the Virginia Beach bank, Buckley fired a gun at the wall to force the tellers to turn over the money faster. He also set a fake bomb with the sole purpose to be a diversion so he had time to escape to the waiting getaway car being driven by his accomplice (“Man”). In comparison to this theft case, Anita Foster-Machado (50 at the time of the crime) was convicted of embezzling $20,000 in 2014. She was the director of new development of the Bristol Virginia Public Library Foundation, and her role was to oversee new donations. It was found that she had been using the library foundation’s credit card for personal purposes, from early 2010 to June 2013. Foster-Machado had used the credit card to purchase clothing, and two and a half years’ worth of Botox treatments before she was caught (Smith). These two crimes with similar damages were not treated as similar by the court. Though Buckley had stolen from multiple banks, the amount he took only came out to a total of about $16,500 (“Man”), and he was faced with a greater sentence than Foster-Machado, who took a greater amount of money. Buckley was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and so was Howard (“Man”). Foster-Machado was originally sentenced to 20 years, but 18 of them were suspended leaving her with just two years in jail. She was also charged with a total of six different felony counts, but four of them were dropped (Soares). In summary, Foster Machado embezzled more money than Buckley stole, and she received a much lesser sentence.

Overall, 37 percent of white collar criminals, who are convicted in the United States do not go to prison at all. To contrast, only nine percent of those convicted of narcotics offenses stay out of prison (Curry and Miller). The political environment including national administrations influence the length of sentences of particular crimes. On average, with Republican Congress control and an assumingly Democratic president, white collar crime sentences are 24 per cent shorter than with a Republican president. This indicates that only the serious cases are chosen for prosecution under Republican administrations, begetting higher sentences on average (Curry and Miller).

An example of a short sentence for a pronounced embezzlement would be the Paul Manafort case. On 21 August, 2018, Paul Manafort was convicted of 8 counts of bank and tax fraud totalling somewhere between 12 and 30 million dollars. In March 2018 he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, when he could have received 24. The judge in charge of prosecuting this crime, Judge Ellis, says this was because of his “otherwise blameless life.” In my opinion this is unfair because this trial was not about past crimes and the current crime at hand. However, one should address some logical reasons why this can happen. For example, many white collar crimes involve extremely complicated accounting schemes, without witnesses, often making them difficult to understand and prove (Curry and Miller). Of course, it is not only the professional lawyers and judges who make the decision. All criminals have a constitutional right to testify before a jury of their peers.

The jury is a group of people who help decide a defendant’s sentence. The jury is made up of twelve people if the crime is felonious, and only six if it is a misdemeanor (McKey). Studies show that the jury’s decision is based on each juror's moral code. According to a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, Johnathon Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” there are five decision making foundations, and the decision is based on how sensitive someone is to them. The first is care and harm, which concerns whether or not the defendant’s actions were in the interest of the public. The second is about fairness and the expectation that in doing something selfless for someone else, they will do something for you in return. In the case of the courtroom, jury members ask themselves, ‘did the defendant intend to level out the playing field, or was the crime committed to get an unfair advantage?’ The third is loyalty and betrayal, for example, wanting to fit in and betraying someone to do so. The fourth is about authority and whether or not the defendant respected the rights that go along with someone’s position in a professional or social hierarchy. Finally, the fifth is simply the disgust the juror feels (Rudrich and Koenig). One might conclude that the disgust at the picture an attorney paints of something violent or causing injury will then be focused on the guilty party. These five points are the foundations of the jury’s ethical decision making.

The actions of the lawyers may affect the outcome in many ways. Lawyers may use different tactics to get a juror on their client’s side. One method is to tell the case in story form so that the information is not twisted when the juror inherently organizes it into a story himself to better understand (Rudrich and Koenig). When the juror does this, they may choose to identify a “victim” and “villain,” and a lawyer can not risk his client being deemed the “villain” in the eyes of the jury. Another tactic is how a lawyer chooses and highlights morals of the story he creates by using terms that don’t have negative connotations when describing their client. If a client is guilty it is difficult to use words that are positive, but they can at least use ones that are not negative (Rudrich and Koenig). These methods help a lawyer to get the jury on the side of their client.

The fact that white collar crimes in the United States are not being punished as harshly as blue collar crimes is, in my opinion, a very important issue. While researching this I learned about how consequential this issue is, and how it is not the fault of the laws, it is the ethical decision making of the people tasked with deciding the punishments. For my project, I will create surveys to send out to people I know inquiring about their responses if they were in the jury. I will then use the data collected in collaboration with my research to create a project representative of the ethical decision making of the public. This is very significant because it affects the public. People are not only the problem and the victim, but they can be the solution.

Works Cited

“§ 18.2-95. Grand Larceny Defined; How Punished.” Code of Virginia, Virginia’s Legislative Information System, 2018. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/18.2-95/ Accessed 22 April 2020.

Curry, Brett, and Banks Miller. “It’s Not Just Paul Manafort. This is Why White-Collar Criminals Often Evade Harsh Punishment.” The Washington Post, 18 March 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/18/its-not-just-paul-manafort-this-is-why-white-collar-criminals-often-evade-harsh-punishment/. Accessed 9 April 2020.

Gayla, Marella. “What’s the Punishment for Theft? Depends On What State You’re In.” 9 August 2019. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-punishment-for-theft-depends-on-what-state-you-re-in. Accessed 6 April 2020.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. J. B Lippincott & Co. 11 July 1960.

“Man Sentenced to More Than 15 Years in Prison for Multiple Armed Bank Robberies.” WTKR, 24 July 2018. https://www.wtkr.com/2018/10/03/man-sentenced-to-more-than-15-years-in-prison-for-multiple-armed-bank-robberies. Accessed 8 April 2020.

McKey, Bracken. Personal Interview. 21 April 2020.

Rudich, Eric, and Mary Beth Koenig. “The Moral Foundation of Jurors.” Claims and Litigation Magazine, 19 June 2017, https://clmmag.theclm.org/home/article/The-Moral-Foundation-of-Jurors. Accessed 10 April 2020.

Smith, Rain. “Charity Official Charged with Embezzlement of Bristol Library Funds.” Times News, 22 August 2014. https://www.timesnews.net/News/2014/08/21/Charity-official-charged-with-embezzlement-of-Bristol-library-funds Accessed 8 April 2020.

Soares, John. “Former Library Charity Director to Prison for Embezzlement.” WCYB, 25 August 2015. https://wcyb.com/news/virginia-news/former-library-charity-director-to-prison-for-embezzlement. Accessed 8 April 2020.

Wildeus, Jessica. “Virginia’s Petty Theft and Larceny Laws: A Quick Guide.” Tingen Williams, 17 March 2020. https://tingenwilliams.com/2019/petty-theft-and-larceny-virginia/34932 Accessed 21 April 2020.