The government’s sentencing memo lumps Suarez in with some pretty notorious company – including convicted U.S. Rep. Jim Traficant.
It accuses Suarez of badgering a key witness in the case -- a woman who was suffering from cancer and whose son had committed suicide. It maintains that everything he did -- from the book Suarez wrote 20 years ago to a lawsuit he used to discredit a witness -- shows contempt for justice. And the U.S. attorney’s office maintains that Suarez is now arguing that he’s “too rich and successful to go to jail.”
Rather, the feds say, he deserves eight years in prison.
But Suarez’s presentencing memo fires back against what he calls an “overzealous” effort to “put a 73-year-old grandfather in a cage.”
It says the government, not Suarez, harassed the witness. And it maintains that Suarez should get probation because his company could go under without him —and even a short time in prison “could be a death sentence.”
Suarez was acquitted on nine other charges in the case.
