New York Daily News - Home - Stanley Crouch: Twenty-five years. That's rich

New York Daily News - Home - Stanley Crouch: Twenty-five years. That's richTwenty-five years. That's rich

It seems fitting that right here in our town, with the sentencing of WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers to 25 years, the legal system seems to be catching up with our exemplary NYPD, which has whittled down significant sequoias of crime over the last decade.

One of the cliches of contempt for American justice always comes forward when the rich walk free while the poor listen to prison bars slam nightly. We're often told - and not always incorrectly - that crime in the suites is never taken as seriously as crime in the streets. A street robber will get a long sentence while some pencil-pushing cur gets a slap on the paw for manipulating figures in a way that defrauds others of millions - or billions.

It takes time for the human elements of our justice system to evolve to the point where they are capable of overwhelming the seemingly infinite power of money.

Jurors have to look past the well-orchestrated bunk and not be distracted or swayed by the great eloquence of a lawyer so given to manipulation that his lies easily trade place with the truth. Most important of all, the common people have to take the courageous step of bringing the unlawful mighty down where they belong.

Slow though it may be, and hampered by the legal hook slides of high-priced mouthpieces, the mighty force of justice is now felt like a tsunami. It is running fast but not loose. It is sinking the fates of those who deserve to be waterlogged by fair play. Oh, how the ruthless geezers with their trophy wives are going under and how their beautifully suited sons feel as though their lungs are being burst by the focused liquidity of the law.

After all was said and done and Ebbers was sentenced in Manhattan Federal Court by U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones for overseeing the largest financial fraud in history while the CEO of WorldCom, everything was over except the weeping.

Ebbers' team turned on the sprinklers in the last act. Defense lawyer Reid Weingarten, cried during his summation. Ebbers' wife cried when her husband took the spear pushed in with such grace by the judge. Feeling as if gutted by the wound of heavy jail time, Ebbers himself was driven to the sniffle line, pulling forth a handkerchief that some must have thought he was going to tie around his face, like the robber he is. Ah, sweet justice.

Just two weeks earlier, 80-year-old John Rigas, the imperial geezer and founder of Adelphia Communications, was sentenced to 15 years in prison nearly a year after his conviction for playing a starring role in the fraud that brought down the nation's fifth-largest cable company. His dark-souled son Timothy, the company's former CFO, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Good. A plague on the both of them.

Such sentencing serves as a powerful rejoinder to street criminals who justify their sins with examples of unpunished crime in the suites. Jones should be considered for the Supreme Court. As they used to say in the streets, she ain't scared.

Originally published on July 14, 2005