Legal Commentary

Check out the NYT article on Judge Urbina's unusual alternative sanction: the offender must write a book about his experience:

Call him the homework judge, not the hanging judge. On Monday, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, sentenced a former senior pharmaceutical executive to write a book. Earlier this year the executive, Dr. Andrew G. Bodnar, a former senior vice president at Bristol-Myers Squibb, had pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the federal government about the company?s efforts to resolve a patent dispute over the blood thinner Plavix. The judge sentenced Dr. Bodnar to two years of probation during which he is to write a book about his experience connected to the case. Dr. Bodnar must also pay a $5,000 fine. Elkan Abramowitz, Dr. Bodnar?s lawyer, said he had never before heard of a case in which a judge sentenced a defendant to write a book. But this is not the first time Judge Urbina has demanded written penance. In 1998, he sentenced a prominent Washington lobbyist to write and distribute a monograph to 2,000 lobbyists at the defendant?s own expense.

I'll have some more reactions to this in the next couple days.  Thanks to my pal Andrew Epstein via Ashby Jones for the tip.