U.S. v. Vandebrake
Decision Date | 08 February 2011 |
Docket Number | Nos. CR10–4025–MWB,CR10–4028–MWB.,s. CR10–4025–MWB |
Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff,v.Steven Keith VANDEBRAKE, Defendant.United States of America, Plaintiff,v.Kent Robert Stewart, Defendant. |
Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Iowa |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Andre M. Geverola, Laura Heidi Manschreck, Robert Michael Jacobs, U.S. Department of Justice, Chicago, IL, Timothy T. Duax, U.S. Attorney's Office, Sioux City, IA, for Plaintiff.Francis L. Goodwin, Baron, Sar, Goodwin, Gill & Lohr, Sioux City, IA, for Defendant.
Writer Pearl S. Buck cogently observed in her novel The Good Earth, “Hunger makes a thief of any man.” Defendants Steven Keith VandeBrake and Kent Robert Stewart came before the court for sentencing on February 8, 2011, for violations of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1. Neither defendant, however, suffered from hunger, at least as Pearl Buck knew it, but from insatiable greed, which is all the more shocking because both were already wealthy, multi-millionaire businessmen. Sir Francis Bacon wrote, “Opportunity makes a thief.” While Stewart's greed was at least tempered a modicum by Stewart's misguided motivation to ensure the jobs and livelihood of his employees, VandeBrake's appalling greed knew no such bounds and was fueled by the unique ease and opportunity that his industry, concrete sales, gave him in establishing a concrete cartel in northwest Iowa.1 The defendants, although dressed in the attire of hard working businessmen, were nothing more than common thieves, and serial ones at that. Like a neighborhood thief, they stole from friends, acquaintances, businesses and local governments.2 The defendants tools of their trade were not dark clothing worn in midnight burglaries facilitated by pry bars and screw drivers. Instead, in ordinary business attire and in the glare of broad daylight, they used the ordinary communication tools of modern commerce and business, cell phones, Blackberries, and e-mail to rob their victims. Unlike the neighborhood thief who values high end TV's, computers, jewelry, and furs, the defendants specialized in cold hard cash. Unlike the neighborhood thief whose victims immediately recoiled in shock at the loss of their property, the defendants stole from their victims without them ever knowing it. Their actions, clever and cunning, but taken with full knowledge and intent to violate this Nation's criminal antitrust laws.3
The court recognizes that the parties are heavily invested in the two plea agreements worked out between the defendants and the prosecution. Defense counsel, being vigorous advocates for the defendants, quite rightly endeavored to negotiate the best possible deal for their clients. The prosecution, on the other hand, has a broader obligation. As Justice Sutherland explained so eloquently some seventy years ago,
The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor-indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.
Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88, 55 S.Ct. 629, 79 L.Ed. 1314 (1935); see Model Rule of Prof'l Conduct R. 3.8 cmt. [1] (2007) (The prosecution has the responsibility to be “a minister of justice and not simply that of an advocate.”). To those ends, the prosecution has worked diligently to “do justice” in these cases through the terms of the plea agreements worked out with the defendants. The prosecution's view, however, is hampered because it comes to these cases with a perspective narrowed by its prosecution of only antitrust cases. With all due respect, the prosecution lacks the undersigned's breadth of experience, which comes from presiding over more than 2,600 sentencings, on a wide array of criminal conduct, in over sixteen years on the federal bench. The court's role and duties differ from both that of the prosecution and defense counsel. As Judge Learned Hand observed, “[a] judge is more than a moderator; he is charged to see that the law is properly administered and it is a duty which he cannot discharge by remaining inert.” United States v. Marzano, 149 F.2d 923, 925 (2d Cir.1945)....
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