A month ago, Hervé Falciani, an IT expert, was sentenced to five years in prison by a Swiss court for aggravated industrial espionage, data theft and violation of commercial and banking secrecy.
According to the Associated Press, a meerkat expert was sentenced today for charges relating to an assault against a monkey handler at a zoo Christmas party in a "love spat" over a llama keeper.
"Kansas provides a hopeful example," said Kevin R. Reitz, an expert in sentencing law at the University of Colorado.
In North Carolina, about 8,000 cases may be affected in those years, said Ronald F. Wright Jr., a law professor at Wake Forest University and an expert on sentencing law.
Douglas A. Berman, an expert in sentencing at Ohio State University's law school, said, "The celebration of the new reforms has to be tempered by the reality that it's, at the most, half a loaf".
Douglas A. Berman of Ohio State University, an expert on sentencing and punishment, says the recent legal challenges concerning death penalty drugs are more than a mere inconvenience to the process.
Still, Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University and an expert on sentencing law, said Judge Cassell's decision was likely to be influential, given the high quality of its analysis and the judge's background.
Douglas A. Berman, an expert on sentencing issues at Ohio State University's law school, said that the latest decision suggests that judges are becoming "notably less eager to fudge the law" on the question of causation "to enable an obviously deserving victim to collect from an obviously unpleasant defendant" in these cases.
"More and more courts are noticing and asserting, in a variety of ways, that there seems to be some relevance to military service, or history of wartime service, to our country," said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University and an expert on sentencing.
Douglas A. Berman, an expert on sentencing law at Ohio State University, expressed concern about "a tone and culture that says, 'Hey, if the victims are really ticked, let's give them their due.' " That said, Professor Berman saw good reason to throw not just the book at Mr. Madoff but the entire library.
