Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to the U S law essentials law and language podcast, the legal English podcast for non-native English speakers that helps you improve your English, listening, improve your legal English vocabulary and build your knowledge of American legal culture. Welcome to the U S law Central's law and language podcast. I'm Daniel Edelson
Speaker 1 00:00:24 And I'm Steven Horowitz.
Speaker 0 00:00:25 And today's our next episode in the what's new in the legal new series.
Speaker 1 00:00:30 Yeah, but damn, it's a new year. So I thought maybe we should talk about a couple of new things going on with the U S law central slaughter language podcast.
Speaker 0 00:00:38 I think that's a, that's a, that's a great idea. So in general, we've had a couple of new new projects besides for all the new podcasts that have come out. We recently did a prerecorded M and a legal English presentation,
Speaker 1 00:00:55 Like M and M's.
Speaker 0 00:00:57 I wish it were M and M's, but no, it was a merger and acquisition
Speaker 1 00:01:01 And Hey, I get it. Okay. And then was there, oh, there was a, we did a asynchronous online legal English course for a law school that was taught it together. That was fun.
Speaker 0 00:01:15 Yeah. And it, um, and there, there were some live components too. We ended up with a moot court presentation.
Speaker 1 00:01:23 Yeah. Oral arguments on, on zoom. Um, so that was fun. So it was so a big part of it was asynchronous and I, I'm not sure that there's any other asynchronous legal English courses out there like that. Um, and then, uh,
Speaker 0 00:01:37 Not yet, not yet anybody who wants a asynchronous legal English course, you should just contact us.
Speaker 1 00:01:45 So, um, and then we had that nice synchronous part at the end with, with the oral arguments. And that was a lot of fun with
Speaker 0 00:01:51 The students. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:01:54 And then, uh, one other thing,
Speaker 0 00:01:57 Uh, I give up
Speaker 1 00:02:00 Transcripts, uh, we now have transcripts of past episodes and, uh, we don't have all of them yet, but we've got about 10 or 15 ready now and more coming every day. So,
Speaker 0 00:02:14 So Steve, let's say, let's say I was dying just to read all the things that you have said to me over these podcast episodes. How can I get these transcripts?
Speaker 1 00:02:26 So you just go to the U S law essentials, uh, law and language podcast page. And there there's a forum. I think you scroll down just a little bit and you just sign up right there and you could start getting all the transcripts for free.
Speaker 0 00:02:43 I'm going there right now.
Speaker 1 00:02:44 Right now we don't, we've got to do a, an episode right now. We've got to show to do
Speaker 0 00:02:48 That's right. That's right. Uh, and today, today was actually my day. I picked an article.
Speaker 1 00:02:52 Yes. Today's your day. So what'd you pick for us? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:02:55 Okay. I got it right here. Um, this is from a website called J supra and the name of the article is substantial sentence likely for convicted Theranose CEO, Elizabeth Holmes.
Speaker 1 00:03:10 Oh, wow. That's a, that's a good mouthful. And, and we'll have the link to this article in the show notes. So substantial sentence. It's like, I like the alliteration with the SS substantial sentence, likely for convicted Theranose CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. So there's a company called Theranos and their CEO was Elizabeth Holmes. Is that right?
Speaker 0 00:03:31 That is correct.
Speaker 1 00:03:32 And she has a subs. This isn't even a complete sentence. How could this be a substantial sentence? If this headline is not even a complete sentence there?
Speaker 0 00:03:42 Well, you're the grammar expert. So I don't really know whether or not there is a complete sentence or not, but, but now we're confusing ourselves because we're using sentence in a number of different ways. So let's, so let's start with the sentence here. Um, you being Mr. Synonym, what would be a synonym for sentence in this sentence?
Speaker 1 00:04:04 Uh,
Speaker 0 00:04:06 Punishment. I think that would be right. So Ms. Holmes was convicted. Now, if we're saying that she's convicted, that means she's had a trial and she was found guilty. So the jury convicted her, but now it's almost time for her to get punished. So she's going to receive her sentence.
Speaker 1 00:04:31 I an alleged criminal for when you're convicted. That means you don't use alleged anymore. You just say convicted.
Speaker 0 00:04:39 Yeah. So she she's now she's now officially a criminal. And this article is interesting because instead of simply focusing on her crimes, instead, this article I think is interesting because it introduces the federal sentencing guidelines, which is how federal judges determine what sentence to give convicted defendants.
Speaker 1 00:05:10 So federal sentencing guidelines is not, uh, a guide book on how judges should write sentences in their court opinions. Is that
Speaker 0 00:05:18 No, of course, if you want guidelines on how to write sentences in proper legal English, I guess you would want to get a Steve and Dan us Los Angeles, legal English, synchronous, and asynchronous course. Right. But this is different.
Speaker 1 00:05:33 Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Thank you. Thanks. That could work through, but wait a second, wait a second. Let's step back for a second. What's the Theranos and who's Elizabeth Holmes is she,
Speaker 0 00:05:44 Um, you know, she's, she was sort of a celebrity and now she's famous, but now she's a little bit more infamous than famous. My understanding of fairness is that it was a company based in California and it was marketing itself as developing a really cool way to test people's blood and to give back medical results. And she became really famous for this company and its new device. And then it all fell apart.
Speaker 1 00:06:24 Oh yeah. And she went to Stanford. So she was from like, she was part of the whole Silicon valley crowd and she had a whole persona or something and everybody believed her a lot of really high level well-known people supported her and put money in her thing. So it was, it sort of became like a, like a, like a con game almost.
Speaker 0 00:06:46 Yeah. I mean, this is one of those, oh, it almost sounded too good to be true. And then it turned out to be too good to be true. There was a, there was a whistleblower in the company and you do you know what a whistleblower is,
Speaker 1 00:07:00 Right? Somebody who blows a whistle.
Speaker 0 00:07:03 Absolutely. So the whistleblower is the person who reports on, um, unlawful activity by, by the company. And so this was, uh, a fairly high level person within their nose. Who said, you know, all these claims that this company is making, including claims that miss Ms. Holmes is personally making on TV and on the internet, it's just not true. Our device does not work as well as people are claiming.
Speaker 1 00:07:36 Ah, okay. So that's why they've been in the news so much because it was just this big, she was like a celebrity and then it turned out there was all this fraud and people couldn't believe it. So anyway, we're done with the trial, she's guilty, she's convicted and now we're getting into sentencing. And I guess this article is sort of speculating and trying to take an educated guess at, uh, what the sentence might be.
Speaker 0 00:08:01 Exactly. And it's a really good introduction to how federal judges are supposed to determine what sentence to impose on a convicted defendant.
Speaker 1 00:08:15 You mean they don't use the TLR method? Do you know the TLR
Speaker 0 00:08:18 Method? No. What's that
Speaker 1 00:08:20 TLR that looks about right. T L a R the TLR. I mean, That's a Jeff, well, I guess there is such thing as the two I'm not here because people use it in life all the time. Right.
Speaker 0 00:08:35 And it's how I designed my asynchronous online legal English courses. So essentially the federal sentencing guidelines tell the judge, okay. Depending on the type of crime here is the starting point for what type of punishment the person should receive. So there's different levels. So if it's say like a level 35 crime or something like that, then there should be a certain base or standard punishment. But if it's not as serious, you know, let's say it's a level four crime, then there should be a certain baseline, um, punishment. That would be significantly less than if it was, say this level 35
Speaker 1 00:09:21 Crime. Can I ask you a personal question?
Speaker 0 00:09:25 You, Steve, you can ask me anything you want.
Speaker 1 00:09:27 What's the highest level of crime you've ever committed.
Speaker 0 00:09:30 I don't know. Cause I've never read the federal sentencing guidelines, but you know, I'm hoping that at least a one or a two, you know?
Speaker 1 00:09:37 Yeah. I know. You'd like to think that we'd be up there with something. I don't know. Uh, I don't know. Anyway, we'll, we'll, we'll have to get back to that in a future episode, figure out if we've ever gotten onto that scale.
Speaker 0 00:09:48 Okay. And by the way, by the way, um, I just want you to know that I'm not wearing a wire, so this isn't being recorded, although it's being recorded. So if you want to confess to a crime go right ahead.
Speaker 1 00:09:58 Uh, okay. I'm confused, but okay. So it is being re it's being recorded. Okay. Let me, let me ask you another question now, please, which is, uh, these sentencing guidelines. This is like a required thing that judges have to do.
Speaker 0 00:10:14 You know, that's a really good question. And the answer is no, but yes,
Speaker 1 00:10:22 Yeah. More confusing than the wire wire and not recording, but recording covet and you made a few minutes.
Speaker 0 00:10:28 Well, I I've sentenced you to confusing sentences. So here's how it works. They are guidelines. And because they're guidelines, they're not mandatory. However judges are required to use them. And if they deviate from them, I think they have to explain why. So on the one hand, a federal judge can use his or her discretion to deviate from the guidelines, but they have to have a reason for doing so. Otherwise they have to start with these guidelines. And my understanding is then follow the guide, then follow these guidelines when imposing
Speaker 1 00:11:13 The sentence. So, so a judge could use the TLR method, but if they do and it, and it's very different than what the sentencing guidelines suggest or recommend in that case, then, uh, then it's not going to look good for the judge they're going to have
Speaker 0 00:11:29 On appeal, could get, it, could get reversed. And I think, I think one way to think about this is remember there's all these different federal courts all over the country, right? But the federal court system is supposed to be a single court system. So the, the goal here I think is to make sure that if you're convicted of a crime in a federal court in California, or you're convicted of a federal crime in a federal court in New York, your sentence should be about the same,
Speaker 1 00:12:01 Right. And yet there's, there's what, 95 district courts, federal district courts around the country, and then another, whatever 13, uh, appellate courts. So at each, each of those courts has multiple judges. So we're talking hundreds of judges around the us. Um, they must, you know, different personalities, different backgrounds, you know, it seems like it would be very hard to get a consistent view. So I guess this, these federal guidelines, sentencing guidelines are there to do the best they can to try to achieve some sort of consistency.
Speaker 0 00:12:35 I think that's exactly right. So this article predicts that Ms. Holmes is going to receive somewhere between 17 to 21 years in prison.
Speaker 1 00:12:47 That sounds very specific. You know, if you were using the TLR method or just guesstimation or a wag, you know what a wag is
Speaker 0 00:12:57 A know, what's a wag
Speaker 1 00:12:58 Wag. That's the technical term for a wild ass guess basically, I guess. Um, so it doesn't seem like you'd come up with numbers like 17 and 21. It seems like you've come up with round numbers, like 20 or 10 or 30 or 50.
Speaker 0 00:13:16 Yeah. Cause I think, um, and again, I never practiced, I never practiced criminal law. I hope I haven't practiced crimes, but I never practiced criminal law. And what I, yeah. So I think that the reason why the numbers get so specific is because there's a specific, um, level of the offense. And then there's specific mitigating factors, meaning the judge should show leniency or a specific aggravating factors, meaning that the judge should impose a harsher sentence. So if you get an aggravating factor, you might go up a few levels. Like if you're the mastermind criminal, but if you are, uh, just a minor player, you can get some mitigating factors and you might go down a few levels, wait,
Speaker 1 00:14:02 Using these words, aggravating and mitigating as if they're opposites. And yet when I hear the word aggravating, I think of when my children are crying or whining to me about needing something, right. When I'm on the middle of a phone call or try to help one child and the other one is screaming. I find that very aggravating. It is aggravating. You, you know that to your,
Speaker 0 00:14:27 Your, your children aggravate me too.
Speaker 1 00:14:29 Oh, that's so wonderful to hear.
Speaker 0 00:14:31 No, actually, no, no, no. I, I I've had, I've had some limited experience with your children and I find, I find nothing aggravating about that.
Speaker 1 00:14:38 Um, so we're talking about aggravating in terms of, of annoying. We're saying aggravating is annoying, but I don't think in this case, you're saying that if there's annoying factors, it will make the sentence worse. No
Speaker 0 00:14:54 Aggravating. Certainly one of these terms that's become legal English. So people might've heard of things like aggravated assault. So, so aggravating here refers to something that makes a crime even more severe.
Speaker 1 00:15:12 Right. So it's like worsening just, just means generally making it worse, I guess.
Speaker 0 00:15:16 Yeah. Um, mitigating, how would you explain the word mitigating?
Speaker 1 00:15:22 I think eight. I mean, that's a word we all had to learn for the sat test when we're in high school and we're studying for, you know, for college exams, you mitigate means to lesson just a fancy word. That means to make less,
Speaker 0 00:15:36 Ah, ha. So you, with some mitigating factors, you could hope to get a reduced a reduced sentence.
Speaker 1 00:15:43 Yeah. And I remember in, in contract law, there's a duty to mitigate. So if one side breaks a contract and does cause us some sort of harm, then you still have as the other party, you can't go ahead and say, well, everything's going to be bad and we're going to make it worse. And now you're going to owe me a lot more money. You have a duty to mitigate, so you still have to try to limit the damage.
Speaker 0 00:16:08 Steve that's awesome. I I'm really proud of you that you remember your contracts class from, from law school. Well, do you remember anything from your math classes?
Speaker 1 00:16:23 Um, I think I blocked it all out because when I was reading this article and it got to a part where it says a defendant is placed along an X, Y axis, all of a sudden, all this panic rushed over my brain. Um, and I realized they were going to use math or math concepts to explain how this, this, uh, these sentencing guidelines work. Um, although then I read it and it wasn't as bad as I thought, but I was surprised that it was as concrete and specific as it is. And I guess that's where you come up with a 17 to 21, like there's specific numbers involved. Well, let's see. Dan, anything else that's that's uh, would be aggravating or mitigating for you in this, in this article?
Speaker 0 00:17:08 No, I thought the article was, was, was really, was really interesting and it, it shows how I think criminal criminal defense lawyers can help their clients understand what the likely result of going to trial could be. If, if the, if the defendant is convicted,
Speaker 1 00:17:28 Right, they're not just taking a guess. They can point to certain concrete things and say, okay, this is what you risk by. Not by not, uh, try to reach a plea bargain with the prosecutor.
Speaker 0 00:17:39 Yep. It's a, that's a good point. Hey, so you know what else can be sometimes a little bit aggravating,
Speaker 1 00:17:44 Aggravating and the legal English sensor aggravating in the regular meeting. So that's
Speaker 0 00:17:50 Aggravating in the everyday life sense. Okay. What did you ever listened to a podcast and then wonder what the person said or want to figure out how you could practice your legal English better?
Speaker 1 00:18:01 Yes. All the time.
Speaker 0 00:18:03 What I know, what you would eat well, you know what you should do then what should I do? You should go to the U S law essentials lawn language podcast, page, and sign up and you can get the, you can get the transcripts.
Speaker 1 00:18:14 Oh, excellent. And now we're done with the episode. So I can, we both have time to go there and do that though. And we can see what we said.
Speaker 0 00:18:21 I'm really looking forward to figuring out what I said. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:18:24 I think that'll help, really mitigate our lack of comprehension of, of what we said.
Speaker 0 00:18:30 Okay. Well thanks very much, Steve. And, uh, Stan essential. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:18:34 Stay essential.
