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Bernie Madoff Will Not Appeal His 150 Year Sentence

Bernie Madoff's lawyer has confirmed that Bernie won't appeal his 150 year sentence. He thinks any sentence Bernie would get, even under the guidelines, would be a life sentence.

Can someone remind me what Bernie Madoff's lawyers' accomplished for him? He could have stayed with his wife in his apartment on bond for another year or two while fighting the case. He got no agreement that his family and friends wouldn't be investigated or charged. He and his wife gave up all his assets (except $2.5 million his wife gets to keep), including those that would have been difficult for the Government to prove were forfeitable, he got no sentence concession, no agreement on place of incarceration. And now they won't appeal the sentence.

What's left for Bernie? Any bets on whether he'll file a 2255 to overturn his guilty plea and sentence based on ineffective assistance of counsel? It wouldn't have a snowball's chance in h*ll but he's got a lot of time on his hands and a year to file it. As I've said a few times, what more could the Government have done to him --we don't have life plus cancer as a penalty (yet.)

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    It may be possible (5.00 / 1) (#6)
    by eric on Thu Jul 09, 2009 at 07:31:37 PM EST
    that Mr. Madoff has simply given up and accepted his fate.  He did a straight plea without any deal.  They surely told him what would happen, but it is he who calls the shots, not his lawyers.

    The point of Madoff taking it like this (5.00 / 1) (#8)
    by scribe on Thu Jul 09, 2009 at 08:09:43 PM EST
    was that he was protecting others.  He is protecting his wife, his sons, the feeder fund people, you name it.  Not just from criminal and civil charges, but also from angry investors (especially those Spelled "R-u-s-s-i-a-n o-l-i-g-a-r-c-h-s").  This way, he figures he never has to say anything.  No cooperation.  No ratting out.  No help to the government at all.  He goes to his cell and later his grave silent.

    I would bet he knows or suspects he either has a terminal disease or figures that his life expectancy in the joint is less than the actuarial tables would provide.  

    But let's not take this as an example of some noble sentiment or inner nobility in Bernie:  he was and is a sociopath who worked people for his own advantage.  He ruined a lot of lives, and that's granting that the people who invested with him were quite happy when he was providing returns which were impossible not to have been from fraud of one flavor or another and were smart enough to know that much (all that they needed to know) even if they didn't know all the particulars about how Bernie's particular fraud worked out.  And this debacle has now revealed that for all his success, his menschlichkeit, and all the rest, Bernie Madoff was a sociopath who spent his entire professional career working a fraud and flinging a Lipstick Building-sized F.U. at the world, the government, and particularly the investors he defrauded.  This no-cooperation, no-appeal stance of his is just another aspect of that pathology.

    It may turn out that he got about as (5.00 / 1) (#9)
    by inclusiveheart on Thu Jul 09, 2009 at 08:51:42 PM EST
    good legal counsel as he gave in investment advice and management.

    Somehow (5.00 / 0) (#10)
    by Lora on Thu Jul 09, 2009 at 09:42:33 PM EST
    I just can't get myself too worked up feeling sorry for the guy.

    Harry Markolopos on why Madoff turned self in (5.00 / 1) (#13)
    by polizeros on Fri Jul 10, 2009 at 01:27:48 AM EST
    %%n