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Madoff Lawyer Sorkin Receives Death Threats

By TChris, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Wed Mar 11, 2009 at 01:25:00 PM EST
Tags: Bernard Madoff (all tags)
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There is no Sixth Amendment exception for accused criminals who are particularly out of favor with the public. Bernard Madoff is entitled to a lawyer, just like everyone else who is charged with a crime. Why, then, do some idiots feel the need to threaten Madoff's lawyer, Ira "Ike" Sorkin? The man is just doing his job (and as Jeralyn pointed out, he's done it by pleading Madoff straight up to all the charges against him -- hardly a strategy that should enrage the public).

Memo to the crazed loons who are threatening Sorkin: You're likely to need your own lawyer one day. You might want to rethink your animosity to those who spend their lives defending the accused.

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    Madoff Lawyer Sorkin Receives Death Threats | 14 comments (14 topical)

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    I've wondered (5.00 / 1) (#2)
    by SOS on Wed Mar 11, 2009 at 01:35:11 PM EST
    if the "death threat" has in some cases become a PR tactic for some lawyers to try to get at least a little sympathy for their client. Especially in high profile cases. Or to create super secret closed hearings or something.

    We live in crazy freaking world.

    The short explanation for why the idiots (5.00 / 1) (#5)
    by scribe on Wed Mar 11, 2009 at 02:11:48 PM EST
    are going after Sorkin, is that Madoff has been vilified in the NY press, particularly the tabloids, since minute one of the scandal.

    Big expansive pieces on innocent families trashed out of their life savings, depictions of Madoff and his family living the high life, you name it, all calculated to inflame the readership.  Some examples from today's papers:

    Live a long life in hell, say victims  (that's the headline):

    One wants him to rot in prison, another hopes he has to clean the penitentiary toilets and a few are praying Bernie Madoff meets up with jailhouse justice.

    Fuming victims of Madoff's $64.8 billion Ponzi scheme said Tuesday's news that the Wall Street scoundrel will be sent to prison for 150 years falls short of the punishment they desire.

    "He doesn't have 150 years to live, but I hope his time in jail will be hell on Earth," Joan Sinkin, 75, of Boynton Beach, Fla., said Tuesday.

    * * *
    The breathtaking, decades-long swindle ripped off thousands of investors, including charity groups and luminaries like Mets owner Fred Wilpon, filmmaker Steven Spielberg and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
    * * *
    Burt Ross - the former mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., who lost $5 million - said he plans to be in the courtroom Thursday when Madoff admits his guilt.

    "He deserves no mercy whatsoever," said Ross, 65. "I just hope he doesn't get sent to a plush country club kind of penitentiary."

    Hearing that Madoff is fussy about cleanliness, Ross said he has the perfect prison job for the greedy financier. "I think latrine cleaning would be appropriate for a neat freak," he said.

    Diane Peskin, 45, of Milford, N.J., said she and her husband, Roger, 66, won't be satisfied until all of Madoff's accomplices, including members of his family, are behind bars, too.


    Then there's this:  They pull out the unemployed truck driver waiting on a liver transplant to tell the story of his parents, made destitute.

    Scott Spungin can't wait to meet Bernie Madoff.

    After watching his parents lose their life savings and vacation home in Madoff's Ponzi scheme, Spungin hopes to see the accused $50 billion swindler Thursday in Manhattan Federal Court.

    "I've got issues," an angry Spungin said Saturday after news that Madoff could plead guilty in a deal with prosecutors. "I'm looking at my parents, and they're absolutely devastated.

    All this calculated propaganda, intended to create outrage, serves a purpose beyond mere selling papers:  it masks the fact that there were far more people - many of them still employed in the financial industry - who made bundles off the backs of the same people who are now directing their anger at Madoff and Sorkin.  So long as they are angry at Madoff and Sorkin, those same people will not be looking at the other crooks walking free.

    Hmmm (5.00 / 1) (#6)
    by squeaky on Wed Mar 11, 2009 at 03:21:29 PM EST
    Maybe there is some scapegoating going on, but Madoff did pull off the largest ponzi scheme in hi