Good News - New Legal Precedent Set in Louisiana

[theKed]

If you're facing manslaughter charges in Louisiana, rest easy: you won't be doing time. BP Oil just penned a deal with the Justice Department to pay a $4 billion fine for 11 counts of manslaughter, among other charges. Since corporations are people, too, protected by the same laws and rights as a natural born person, I think it's safe to say the days of doing hard time for manslaughter in Louisiana are over...right?

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — BP PLC closed the book on the Justice Department's criminal probe of its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Gulf oil spill Tuesday, when a federal judge agreed to let the London-based oil giant plead guilty to manslaughter charges for the deaths of 11 rig workers and pay a record $4 billion in penalties.

...

The judge said the $4 billion criminal settlement is "just punishment" for BP, even though the company could have paid far more without going broke. In accepting the deal, Vance also cited the risk that a trial could result in a much lower fine for BP, one potentially capped by law at $8.2 million.

The criminal settlement calls for BP to pay nearly $1.3 billion in fines. The largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the Justice Department was a $1.2 billion fine against drug maker Pfizer in 2009.

The plea deal also includes payments of nearly $2.4 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences. The two groups will administer the money to fund Gulf restoration and oil spill prevention projects.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/bp-guilty-plea-gulf-oil-spill_n_2571785.html

2006 Louisiana Laws - RS 14:31 — Manslaughter
B. Whoever commits manslaughter shall be imprisoned at hard labor for not more than forty years. However, if the victim was killed as a result of receiving a battery and was under the age of ten years, the offender shall be imprisoned at hard labor, without benefit of probation or suspension of sentence, for not less than ten years nor more than forty years.

http://law.justia.com/codes/louisiana/2006/146/78399.html

[arcane1]

1. And the actual human beings who committed the crime likely pay nothing

Imagine if every time you got a speeding ticket or an overdraft charge, your employer paid it off. Would you drive more slowly next time? Hell no!

[theKed]

3. Sentencing equivalent to human criminals

Cut off from doing business in the gulf of mexico for a number of years. Barred from political donations and libbying for a number of years. Reflective enough of incarceration and disenfranchisement.

If corporations get the same rights, they need equivalent punishments. Maybe they'll start playing nice.

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. Obscenity on top of obscenity over a big pile of obscene.

But it's OK, we're all Americans, a nation of laws and all that.