Our View: Shrinking justice in fraud case

After all, no one denies that some customers of Jerrold Young’s Crescent City insurance company paid for insurance they never got.

Young, who initially faced 28 felony charges, has maintained his innocence since his arrest in 2007. He said to the extent wrongdoing occurred, it was perpetrated by one of his employees without his knowledge.

Judge John Morrison disagreed when he sentenced Young to 30 days in jail earlier this month, saying, “As the head of that agency, it’s your responsibility.”

And yet, there was Morrison philosophizing from the Del Norte Superior Court bench less than 10 days later, saying he had reconsidered. Thirty days was too harsh, the judge said, especially since the jail time could result in Young losing his job as a prison correctional officer.

The softening of the sentence angered Del Norte County District Attorney Mike Riese, who said, “That’s not proper to feel sorry for the defendant because he’s a correctional officer; peace officers should be held to a higher standard.”

And yet, there was Riese months earlier reducing dozens of felony charges to two misdemeanors. One resulted in 30 days of house arrest and the payment of $5,000 in restitution by Young’s former employee, Page Castro, for grand theft by embezzlement. For the other, Young agreed to plead no contest on behalf of his business for being an accessory after the fact, setting the stage for this month’s courtroom anti-climax.

“It’s a plea bargain,” Riese said almost a year ago. “I have to look at the cost of prosecution, the likelihood of a conviction and what is the goal. The goal is to protect the consumer.”

Of course one could argue that the ultimate goal of the county’s lead prosecutor should be justice, and all that implies, including appropriate punishment. But eye-popping plea bargains happen everywhere in the country, and in tiny Del Norte, Riese must daily address the reality of what the court system can handle. In this case, an actual trial would have taken months and included more than 100 witnesses, he said.

One could also argue that Young has suffered plenty. He’s paid $200,000 out of pocket, said his attorney. It’s known that Young has settled at least one lawsuit brought by a customer, has paid more than $14,000 in restitution and was fined $17,000 by the California Department of Insurance, which also has placed restrictions on his company’s license.

Maybe that’s as good as it gets when it comes to investigating accusations of white-collar crime in Del Norte County. Make a high-profile arrest, file the charges and ultimately plea-bargain to avoid a costly and complicated trial.

You be the judge.