The two-year prison term Southern District Judge Jed Rakoff ordered for former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta for insider trading was driven by a longstanding hostility to what the judge highlighted as the absurd results of the federal sentencing guidelines.
At liberty to deliver a long sentence in light of Gupta’s use of his privileged position to feed Raj Rajaratnam inside information, Rakoff (See Profile) went the other way, dropping down, and out, of a guidelines range of 78 to 97 months he called irrational given the defendant’s crimes and personal history of charitable works.
