The Delaware Bar association and others will tell you – the AG office lawyers are the true victims in the “du pont heir will not fare will in prison” case. They are hamstrung when trying to convict wealthy people because the wealthy people can hire lawyers. (Lawyers from the very best firms that the AG office lawyers may hope to join in a year or so.) They also have to contend with the fact that they have a boss that leaves the trickiest decisions most fraught with huge downsides entirely to them.
How can we expect the AG office lawyers to prosecute a case they may lose? Obviously we can’t. The AG office lawyers in this case were facing a lose/lose situation. Either they prosecute the rich guy and likely lose because they are utterly outclassed by the defense lawyers and the child rapist goes free, our they cut a ludicrously lenient deal that allows the child rapist to go free. Obviously in that situation, you cut a deal.
If you’re of a conspiratorial bent, this all looks like a shady cover-up. Rich defendant, revolving door attorneys, last-minute plea deals… cue the brooding theme music and time-lapse photography.
I, however, am not of such a mind. Not because I’m not cynical enough—rather, because I am too cynical. I think that to lay this case at the feet of a few bad guys is to miss the wider injustice that this case really represents. This case wasn’t a few villains (or incompetent judges) thwarting the justice system. This was the justice system itself.
Richards got his plea deal because he had good lawyers, one of whom has indiscreetly commented that “it was [a] more than reasonable, an enlightened plea offer.” Of course, he had them because he was rich, but also because he was privileged, white, and above all connected. And those lawyers produced a lot of documents and sowed a lot of doubt. This would’ve been a hard case that might’ve ended in a loss. The prosecutors folded.
The problem isn’t one rich guy buying his way out of the system. The problem is the system itself, underfunded by conservatives and the tough-on-crime crowd, and thus at the mercy of lawyers able to play the game with their full attention. Prosecutors, public defenders—none of them have the resources to be able to focus like a good criminal defense team can. It’s affluenza, alright—but the entire system is afflicted with it.
McConnel, the deputy attorney general who approved the plea deal, told the Wilmington News Journal that these cases “are extremely complicated and difficult and we strive to do justice in each and every case to the best of our ability given the facts and circumstances presented; That sometimes results in a resolution that is less than what we would want.”
That’s an understatement.