Donald Trump, Crime and Punishment

To the Editor:

Re “Should Trump Be Sentenced to Prison? Two Opposing Views” (Opinion guest essay, June 3):

The retired judge Nancy Gertner’s argument against imprisoning Donald Trump omits the simple reality that without prison time, Donald Trump faces no meaningful punishment.

Mr. Trump plainly does not see the fact of having been convicted, standing by itself, as a shameful judgment on himself. Rather, he wears the guilty verdict as a badge of martyrdom. Fines would obviously be meaningless, both because he is a multibillionaire and because his supporters would pay them. And Mr. Trump is not a credible candidate for probation.

Probation is intended to give convicted criminals an opportunity, with appropriate supervision, to reflect on what brought them to commit their crimes and to turn their lives around. No one can argue with a straight face that Mr. Trump sees any need to change his life, nor that criminal justice system supervision could bring him around.

Mr. Trump’s conduct during and since the trial has gone far beyond merely asserting his innocence. For months, he has conducted nonstop vitriolic attacks on the judicial system and on the rule of law, based on manifest lies. Anything but prison represents a surrender to the tacit threats of violence he has uttered since being indicted.

Mitchell Zimmerman
Palo Alto, Calif.
The writer is a retired lawyer.

To the Editor:

The last sentence of Nancy Gertner’s piece is shocking coming from a retired federal judge, but it expresses a widely held perception that is a source of much of our national discord. Judge Gertner concluded, “Besides, Mr. Trump is different, because he was president and could become president again.”

Nowhere in the Constitution or federal law is a former president or a person running for president given special treatment or deference in a legal proceeding.