Mark Osler, professor of law at the School of Law at St. Thomas University, recently spoke to New MPRs About prison sentences for human smugglers sentenced after the death of an Indian family on the Canada-American border.
More than three years after a family of four people from India, he frozen to death while trying to enter the United States along a section far from the Canadian border in a blizzard, two men condemned in an international Human smuggling ground received prison terms in Minnesota on May 28.
Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel was sentenced to 10 years in prison and Steve Anthony Shand, the driver who was supposed to transport the family to Chicago, obtained 6 and a half years. …
The convictions did not drop the penalty of almost 20 years in prison, the federal prosecutors had recommended for the patel and almost 11 years recommended for Shand.
“It would certainly seem that the defense obtained a result closer to what they wanted the accusation,” said Mark Osler, a former federal and state prosecutor who now teaches law at the University of St. Thomas. “In a case like this, where you have the death involved, you will very often grow prosecutors according to the facts to be fulfilled.”
Osler, however, was not surprised by the gap smaller than recommended between the sentences of the two men.
“It is much easier to launch patel as a leader than Mr. Shand, who had a specific role, being the driver,” he said. “But they are both important roles in a case like this.”
