ID Thief Tries To Get Witnesses Whacked 168
adeelarshad82 writes "Pavel Valkovich of Sherman Oaks, CA has pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder, admitting that he attempted to hire hit-men to kill witnesses working with Federal authorities in their investigation of Valkovich's ID theft activities and subsequent crimes. According to the Justice Department: '...Valkovich and others had stolen personal identifying information and used that information to transfer funds from victims' bank accounts to PayPal accounts.'"
Because of transparency, mostly (Score:4, Informative)
An important part of the US court system is to be very open in general. That's why there are specific things in the law like the right to confront your accuser. Well another important part is for your defense team, of which you as the defendant are part, to make sure the jury is truly an unbiased group of your peers. It would invite abuse to have a system where the jurors were a secret group that the defense never got to see.
Yes, it does pose the risk of a defendant attempting to retaliate against jurors, however that is actually extremely rare. It also rarely works out, you'll note that this asshat is now doing more time because of it. There are always tradeoffs, there is no perfect way of doing things and in the US system, transparency of the jury is more important than protecting their identities.
Also, in general you can speak to the judge privately if an answer is something you aren't willing to make in open court. You can request to approach the bench and talk to them about your concern.
Re:What. The. Funk? (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. Murder is normally a "25 to life" affair. However, in this case it would be first degree murder, since it was most certainly premeditated. That is life with no chance of parole in every US jurisdiction I'm aware of, and makes you eligible for the death penalty in some.
Murder gets you extremely heavy time. Attempted murder doesn't get you as much. Solicitation of murder, even less. Reason is in each case, things are less severe. In the first, you actually took someone's life. In the second, you tried, but failed, so despite everything else, the person is still alive at least which makes the situation much less severe. In the third, you didn't even try to kill them, you just asked someone else to, someone who didn't do it.
However let's not pretend like 20 years is a light sentence.