[mindslight]

On reconsideration, I think the facts of this case might actually lead to some prison sentences. Although not nearly as many as there should be - really anyone involved in this including the judge that fabricated paperwork based off dubious details, other law enforcement agencies that blessed it, etc should be charged as part of the criminal conspiracy, which they can then explain away in court, as is routinely done to suspects who aren't government employees.

I think the root of the distrust is there are many other similar cases which seemingly go completely unpunished (eg Afroman). So the details being much worse here is causing proportionally more outrage, when the reality is that those details being more severe means we might actually end up seeing some semblance of justice for at least some of the perps on this one.