I request that anyone who can, please provide me a coherent justification for the good that Scott did to be a reason for more harsh punishment.

Let's start with your premise. I've read the newspaper story three times now, and I fail to see anywhere where the judge or the journalist says or suggests that West got a harsher sentence than he would have had he bought a sport car and silicon implants with his money.

You seem to be suggesting that the fact that he used some of the money for purposes that you admire should justify a more lenient sentence. Fair enough, but more lenient than what? More lenient than he got, or more lenient than he could have received under the federal sentencing guidelines? If the former, then you merely have an argument with the opinion of Judge Phillips, and that's fine - that's what we have Courts of Appeals for.

If you are suggesting that his sentence was harsher than the law called for, however, you would appear to be way off base. According to this story West DID get a break:

Under federal law, he should have faced a minimum mandatory 10-year prison term. But his lack of a prior criminal record and the U.S. Attorney's Office's decision to count his help in untangling the financial state of his Market Square properties as official cooperation netted West the chance for a break.

So the 75 months is significantly less than the minimum sentence that should have been imposed under federal law.

Take issue with the drug laws all you want - they are still the law. Your suggestion that West was punished more harshly because of what he did with the money than he would have been otherwise strikes me as a straw man argument, or at least one which is not supported by the facts of the case.

I admit, I could be missing something so, I request that anyone who can, please provide me a coherent justification for the good that Scott did to be a reason for more harsh punishment.

I don't think you're missing something so much as you are making something out of the statement that isn't there. I read it as saying that doing good doesn't excuse how your acts were financed.
~m.

" Point out any fair and just occasions when someone's good works cause them to receive harsher punishment"

I can't think of specific examples right now but this calls to mind the old adage "no good deed goes unpunished".

Though that's not what the judge said. He said they should be treated equally. Although to my untrained eye it does look like Scott West got a break.

How much time do you think Scott West should have served Cafkia?

The relevant part of this quote to me is "However, the court cannot ignore that many of the defendant's good works were funded by drug money".

We use an "end justifies the means" argument daily so as to not drive ourselves crazy. We kill people in wars but, for a good cause. We pollute our air but, for the sake of the economy. We do all sorts of clearly negative shit so that we can function as a society socially and financially. ~m, how is that different from this situation? When I read that quoted sentance, it appears to me that the judge is very specifically arguing against an ends justification of the means. I have no idea where my friend got the information but said friend informed me, well prior to my making this blog, that the sentancing guidelines were 77 months minimum and I forget which maximum. Things which could apparently be considered in straying outside those guidelines included willingness to cooperate. While there was a minor deviation from the minimum(that my friend claimed) it is minor enough to indicate that the judge is generally against an "ends" argument. Given the reliance upon precedence in our legal system, why could this not be used in all manner of cases where there appears to be upfront damage that is alleged to be ameliorated by the results?

Beanster, your point is pretty strong. I certainly can't argue it. I imagine that it would have to be Scott or Bernadette who takes it on and I doubt that is going to happen. Still, the way everything, every organism, learns is by the punishment of undesirable behavior, the rewarding of desirable behavior, and the ignoring of neutral behavior.
My preference would be that the judge simply not comment on what they did with the money in justifying the sentancing.

I do not personally think that any of the laws around the unregulated recreational pharmaceutical industry make any sense. I think anyone in prison for a non violent act related to that industry should probably be released. I do consider the intentional or negligent manufacture or distribution of product that contains harmful substances that may not be reasonalbly assumed to be in the product to be a violent act. If your question #9 is deeper than that, get more specific in the asking.

For any of you who do not know, I know and consider the Wests to be friends. I have strongly disagreed with some positions they have taken on downtown issues in the past and strongly agreed with others.

CAFKIA

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It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
  - William G. McAdoo

"Good works" was the legal spin of West supporters. Whatever "good works" you want to construe from the West's actions are slammed by the unfair advantage it represents against the hard work of competing businesses (who don't want to look bad in speaking up.) Add the insult of tax evasion, and we all got screwed here.

I love the Preservation Pub and all the style this family has brought to downtown, but loose the blinders here folks.

Perhaps the bigger crime is that our society doesn't want to examine the fate of those sentenced to our correctional institutions, which have less to do with corrections and more to do with avoiding a hideous reality of social manipulations too unspeakable to contemplate during our peaceful afternoons.

Face it, if Scott was sentenced to be locked up beneath the bar for 6 years, nobody would raise a peep.

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we're living in a pathocracy!!