Recently, there was a public outcry because a convicted murderer executed for his crime may have suffered two or three minutes of pain during the execution. Regardless of merits of that controversy, it is ironic that a large segment of our populace is outraged by a murderer suffering pain for two or three minutes, yet no one seems upset by the fact that the United States Probation Department has just recommended a 100-year sentence for a nonviolent first offender, Sam Bankman-Fried.

Let me be clear, Bankman-Fried deserves to be punished; he orchestrated a massive fraud causing huge losses. However, the 100-year recommended sentence is a good example of the overly long sentences that are being imposed every day in our federal courts on nonviolent offenders. It is a useful example because the media coverage of his crimes and that of similar fraudsters of earlier times provides a public record that makes a valid comparison possible.