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Paul Manafort’s prison sentence of less than four years on bank- and tax-fraud charges Thursday sparked outrage from commentators who said it was too light a punishment for his crimes.
But a review of data for all 452 similar cases nationwide in fiscal 2018 show President Trump’s former campaign chairman received a sentence that was somewhat stiffer than other federal defendants’ prison terms.
The average prison sentence in such bank-fraud cases was about 31 months, roughly 16 months shorter than the 47 months Manafort received for convictions in federal court in Northern Virginia, according to an analysis of court data maintained by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
But Manafort, who was convicted by a jury in August 2018, fared much better when compared with other defendants who were also convicted by federal juries.
Exact comparisons are impossible, as no two cases are exactly alike. The TRAC database allows users only to compare cases with the same lead charge — the count a prosecutor deems the most important. But each defendant may also have been convicted of other charges that could affect the length of the sentence imposed.
The average sentence for those trials, 22 in all, was 98 months, according to the analysis.
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