Quote of the week: The Madoff case

July 4, 4:41 PMDC Ethical Issues ExaminerLaura Harrison McBride

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Today, in the Timesonline, a UK Internet publication, John Webster, of National Prison and Sentencing Consultants, was quoted regarding Madoff’s life in jail: “Next to being a sex offender, people who are perceived as stealing from the elderly are not perceived as very popular folk in prison. Everyone has a mother. I think there is going to be some form of retaliation.”

Madoff’s lawyer asked the judge in the case to assign Madoff to a medium-security prison only 70 miles from his family. Answer: No.

Madoff’s wife asked the Feds if she could keep her mink coat. Answer: No.

I think there already has been some retaliation, if one wishes to call it that. I would call it the ethical pendulum swinging to the other side, at last. It is unlikely anyone whom Madoff has harmed will be made whole; most will be lucky to get a pittance. As for the oft-expressed fear that, in a maximum security prison there are lots of skinheads who hate Jews...well, you reap what you sow. And frankly, considering his misdeeds, it is difficult to distinguish between Jew-hating skinheads and Bernie Madoff. It would almost seem he hates Jews. If he doesn't, why would he have convinced Elie Weisel to invest his own and his foundation’s funds in Madoff’s unconscionable pyramid scheme?

If the judge doesn’t send old Bernie to a maximum security prison to either face the skinheads or spend the next 150 years in solitary for his own protection, it will be for only one reason: That judge is able to mete out punishment tempered with mercy. Ordinarily, justice with mercy is the only ethical course of action. This case is no different, except for this: since day one, Madoff has used his attorneys to attempt to further rig the system in his favor. Bernie appears in public saying how sorry he is; behind the scenes, the legal team is seeking various emoluments. Why? Because Madoff can afford them? I would hope not, not anymore. What is the disgraced and supposedly now penniless financier using to pay the lawyers seeking a soft landing for this hard-hearted monster? Shouldn't Madoff be reduced to being represented by public defenders by this time? Maybe they needed his wife's coat so they could sell it to pay the legal team.

As for me, I really don’t care where Madoff goes, as long as every red cent of his ill-gotten gains left intact is split, with minimal administrative skimming, between all those people to whose lives his financial depredations did grievous harm.