In the past few weeks, I took note of a particular trend in news stories about celebrities in legal trouble—one of the media’s favorite topics to cover—that highlights one of the many egregious flaws in the criminal justice system. Recent events involving Felicity Huffman, Harvey Weinstein, and Jane Fonda have illustrated how not just race but also class and fame have allowed certain people to avoid the legal ramifications of their crimes.
On Oct. 15, Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in prison due to her role in the college admissions scandal that was uncovered earlier this year; she had plead guilty and been charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. She was released on October 25, after only 11 days of her sentence, due to a policy that allowed the prison to release someone early if their release date fell on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday.
Huffman’s exploitation of this loophole is an obvious testament to her privilege and power; one can easily speculate that her lawyers and/or advisors were able to specifically arrange this so that she would serve the minimum time possible. Her punishment also includes 250 hours of community service and one year supervised release.
In case it wasn’t already clear how ridiculously lenient Huffman’s punishment was, here are two other recent cases to add some perspective: Tanya McDowell, a homeless black woman, is serving five years in prison for lying about her school district so that her son could go to a better school; and Dayonn Davis, a black teenager, was also sentenced to five years in prison for stealing a pair of shoes in 2018.
This injustice becomes far more frustrating in the case of Weinstein, who was spotted in a Manhattan club (which he was invited to, no less) on Oct. 24. Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment or assault by more than 80 women, but has not spent a single day in prison. He was arrested in May 2018, released on bail, and is apparently out and living his life until his trial in January 2020.
Even if Weinstein ultimately receives an appropriate prison sentence, the process still will have taken over two years since the first allegations against him in October 2017, which again is because he has the money and power to delay his trial and attempt to discredit his accusers.
Compared to Huffman’s case, there is an easy criticism to make about how a woman guilty of bribery was dealt punishment much faster than a man who is arguably the most famous serial sexual abuser in the United States. There are multitudes of historical cases that illustrate the criminal justice system’s overall failure to punish perpetrators of sexual assault in particular, and Weinstein obviously benefits from this.
However, Huffman and Weinstein are still similar in the sense that they are both rich, White, entitled people who abused their power in different ways and, precisely because of that power, have largely evaded justice.
None of this is to say that people with this type of privilege in the criminal justice system can’t use it for good. Fonda has been arrested on the past four consecutive Fridays for protesting climate change outside the US State Capitol; fellow actors Sam Waterston, Ted Danson, Catherine Keener and Rosanna Arquette were arrested alongside her on different occasions.
While there is potential to criticize them as rich white people centering climate change activism around themselves, they can also be viewed as understanding their enormous privilege and using it for a good cause. Not only are the participation and arrests of Fonda and her friends spreading more awareness about climate change activism than those without their fame and status could have, but they can also afford to be arrested because they can easily cover bail money and are very unlikely to face serious punishments in the long run.
But even if the same mechanisms that have allowed Huffman and Weinstein to evade justice are also being used to promote vital social causes by Fonda and others, that doesn’t change the fact that it is extremely and objectively problematic.
Regardless of one’s personal politics, we should all be in agreement that the purpose of any criminal justice system should be to deal justice to criminals fairly and based on the severity of their crimes and not their backgrounds, or the amount of money they can throw at the situation to make it as painless for them as possible.
No matter which way you look at it, the justice system is biased towards people like Huffman, Weinstein, and yes, Fonda—people who are wealthy, famous, and white. The fact that this kind of power gives people the confidence and boldness to commit crimes in the first place is bad enough; it is terrifying to me that their power also means that they can escape the legal consequences, too