Throwing the book at him? 从严判处

Reader question:

Please explain this sentence, particularly “threw the book at him” (threw the book?):

The police threw the book at him as he’d been caught before so he has to go to court and he might even have to go to prison!

My comments:

This time the police are going to punish him severely by sending him to court – and possibly to prison because he is a repeat offender (as he’d been caught before).

That’s it. The police are going to punish him severely by throwing the book at him and throwing it hard at him!

Throwing the book?

It’s not intended to be taken literally, of course. It’s not like the police are going to act like a petulant pupil in class throwing his textbook or notebook at a classmate.

Nope, it’s not like that.

The book the police metaphorically throws here refers not to a textbook – nor notebook or cookbook – but the rule book or the book of law.

In the book of law lists all the crimes punishable plus corresponding lengths of sentences to match those crimes. For a judge to throw the book at someone is to suggest that the judge has gone through the whole book of law before he passes the judgment against a defendant.

The whole book, the entire book, okay? So that we understand the judge has gone through everything, leaving no stones unturned. In other words, the judge isn’t missing anything.

In short, throwing the book at someone means you’re going to punish them severely, to the maximum extent.

Now that I’ve read the riot act, so to speak, let’s disperse and move on to media examples for a better feel of people throwing the book at someone:

1. Victims of Decatur fraudster William Huber burst into applause in a federal courtroom Friday when a judge threw the book at him, sentencing Huber to 20 years in federal prison and ordering him to pay restitution of more than $23 million.

Huber appeared at the U.S. District Court in Peoria after having pleaded guilty earlier to a charge of mail fraud. Huber also admitted to charges of money laundering and prohibited monetary transactions and was sentenced to an additional 30 years on those counts, but the sentences were ordered to run concurrently with the 20-year term for mail fraud.

Darilynn Knauss, assistant U.S. attorney, earlier described how Huber had stolen $15 million from more than 300 investors, many of them his close friends, from 1998 to 2009. He pocketed the money while claiming to run a sophisticated investment system that could beat the stock market; in reality, he traded little and used one investor's funds to pay off another while he lived like a king with fancy cars, vacations and expensive homes in Florida and California.

Knauss said the 61-year-old Huber's con was particularly offensive because not only did he steal investors' money, but he profited again by collecting costly bills for “management” charges based on bogus returns he never earned.

“He was paying himself a management fee for managing his own thievery,” said Knauss. “He paid himself to steal.”

Dozens of victims were packed into the courtroom, and many of them told the court of the devastation wreaked on their lives by a man they trusted and who repaid their faith by robbing them of their pensions and life savings. One widowed victim, Rita Jerger, fought back tears as she described how Huber had stolen the money her late dentist husband worked his whole life to accumulate for their golden years.

She said she and her husband had believed in Huber, never guessing he was living a lie as he flew to Europe first-class on vacations and cruised through the world of exclusive golf clubs and high rollers.

“He has been living on stolen income for 10 years,” she said, looking at Huber and glancing around the courtroom at the faces of her fellow victims.

“He did that to these individuals ... knowing he was taking away their chance of a happy retirement,” added Jerger, 68, who is from Decatur but now lives in Florida.

- Huber sentenced to 20 years in prison for Ponzi scheme that stole $15 million from investors, Herald-review.com, December 11, 2010.

2. They threw the book at her.

Actress Tika Sumpter says her mother was arrested Monday — all because of a $10 late fee at her local library.

“Make sure you turn in your library books North Carolina,” the actress began a lengthy Twitter missive. “My mom was just arrested for having a late fee of 10 dollars on an overdue book!”

The arrest took place in Johnston County, N.C., where the Public Library of Johnston County & Smithfield calls home. According to the library's website, overdue books elicit a 25-cent fine per day, while audio books, movies and CDs run an offender 50 cents every 24 hours.

Nowhere on the website, however, does it mention the possibility of an arrest. But Sumpter, 36, implied officials at the library went as far as to put out a warrant for her arrest.

“Treated like a criminal for a late fee of 10 dollars for overdue books from the library,” she tweeted. “Libraries now put out warrants.”

“An overdue book should NEVER result in a warrant,” she wrote in a separate tweet. “This is a legal scam.”

Making matters worse, the actress contended her mother — a retired corrections officer named Janice Acquista who Sumpter said had no previous rap sheet — actually returned the book that prompted the fine a long time ago.

“What you think can’t happen to you, can,” she wrote. “P.S. My mom returned the book a while back, someone didn’t put it in the system.”

Officials at the Johnston County Sheriff's Office, however, said the warrant for Acquista’s arrest was filed because she wrote a check that bounced, then never made good on the payment afterward.

“It was a worthless check, and the D.A.’s office took out a warrant for her,” said Tammy Amaon, a public information officer for the Johnston County Sheriff's Office.

Amaon said Acquista paid a $500 bond after receiving the arrest warrant on Monday.

North Carolina isn’t the only state where people holding onto overdue library items have been booked. Similar incidents have occurred in Texas and Wisconsin in recent years, while a couple in Michigan faced, but ultimately avoided, jail time this past spring after they lost — and therefore failed to return — a copy of a Dr. Seuss book to their local book house.

- Actress Tika Sumpter says her mother was arrested for $10 library late fee, NYDailyNews.com, November 15, 2016.

3. Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chief, was sentenced to a mere 47 months for eight white-collar crime convictions. In handing down his sentence, Judge T.S. Ellis added insult to injury by stating Manafort had lived a “blameless” life before getting caught committing a host of crimes. Ellis seems to have been unaware that for a good deal of his adult life, Manafort made money — blood money, his own daughter called it — representing a rogues’ gallery of butchers. Newsweek recounted his non-Russian clientele:

Manafort has previously worked in other continents. His first lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, which he ran with fellow Trump aid and political consultant Roger Stone, has been nicknamed the "torturers’ lobby" for having represented so many political leaders involved in human rights abuses.

“Last year, Kenya received $38 million in U.S. foreign aid, and spent over $1.4 million on Washington lobbyists to get it. Nigeria received $8.3 million and expended in excess of $2.5 million. Whom did both countries call upon to do their bidding before the U.S. government? The lobbying firm of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly Public Affairs Co., which received $660,000 from Kenya in 1992-1993 and $1 million from Nigeria in 1991,” details a report from the Center for Public Integrity published in the early 1990s.

And yet, he led an exemplary life, we are to believe?

Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tweeted, “Judge Ellis’s assessment that Manafort led an ‘otherwise blameless life’ was proof that he’s unfit to serve on the federal bench. I’ve rarely been more disgusted by a judge’s transparently preferential treatment to a rich white guy who betrayed the law and the nation.”

Indeed, that reaction was widespread, as legal experts were flummoxed by the slap on the wrist for a sophisticated, greedy and unrepentant criminal. “The sentence is ridiculous, and Ellis’s comments about Manafort’s blameless life are outrageous,” former DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller told me.

Manafort did not commit just one crime but eight, the jury found. His crime spree continued for a decade as he deliberately cheated on his taxes, defrauded banks and hid foreign bank accounts. His motive was pure greed and, to this day, he has yet to acknowledge guilt. He was “humiliated,” he said in court, because he got caught.

Former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah observed, “I think it is a shockingly low sentence given what the recommended guidelines were. I have very rarely seen this drastic of a departure absent some extraordinary reason. And the fact that Manafort wasn’t remorseful and the judge still gave him a very lenient sentence is just mouth-gaping.”

This is not the end of Manafort’s sentencing. He will be sentenced for a different set of crimes in federal court in the District of Columbia next week. Perhaps there his conduct tampering with a witness after arrest and lying to prosecutors in violation of a cooperation agreement will come into play. Miller notes that “the Mueller team has another card to play. They decided to wait until after this sentence was handed down to recommend whether Manafort’s D.C. sentence be served consecutively or concurrently, and I suspect you will see them ask Judge [Amy Berman] Jackson to throw the book at him next week.”

- Americans have every right to be furious over Manafort’s sentence, WashingtonPost.com, March 8, 2019.

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣 编辑：丹妮）