peplaw06;1587589 said:
Best I can tell from quickly researching the issue, the maximum range of punishment he faces is five years. He's looking at a max of 5 on the Travel Act portion of the conspiracy charge, and one year on the dog fighting conspiracy charge. The presumption is that those would run concurrently even if the maximum is levied against him.
No. He's looking at much more than that because of the superseding indictment that will be filed against him. As I explained when this first story broke, Vick will be tagged with RICO violations. They had him on the underlying crimes, but they needed information about the organization--information that the cooperative witnesses can now provide. This is significant for two reasons: (1) it puts Vick's assets at jeopardy; and (2) it can be up 20 years
per violation/activity of the organization in violation of the Act (and there are probably dozens). That is, every time he or anyone in the organization he ran did anything, its a violation that can be added. So they'll nail him on (i) breaking the state law; (ii) gambling on an act that is illegal in a state; (iii) racketeering; (iv) violation of the Travel Act; (v) some assorted federal "soft transfer" crimes like mail fraud, wire act; and (vi) RICO violations. Also, don't rule out potential income tax evasion issues.
If Vick goes to trial, he would assuredly lose. And if he does, I think he would be facing around 5 years and massive fines--and that is after getting lax sentencing.
If he pleas, I don't think the federal prosecutor would let him go with anything less than 1 year in the federal pen (and probably 2). There is no incentive to letting him go on probation or on a light sentence. These prosecutors have jobs to do, and like it or not, part of that job is the determent that comes from making a statement when Vick serves time for dog fighting.
