The message here, kids, is that if you pay enough for a hooker, you can walk away scot free when caught. Particularly, if you are, say, the mayor of New York and you spend thousands of dollars per booty call, you can get away with your marriage intact (good or bad depends on your view of your marriage) and no penalty beyond having to resign your position.
The decision not to press charges against former Gov. Eliot Spitzer for his involvement with a high-priced prostitution ring last year came as no surprise yesterday to several former prosecutors and defense lawyers, many of whom said that the case, while full of lurid and suggestive details, would have been hard to prosecute.
. . .
In laying out his decision not to prosecute Mr. Spitzer, Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said he had three main rationales: Mr. Spitzer had apparently not used any public money or campaign funds for his trysts; there was insufficient evidence that he had broken the law in how he had structured payments to the call-girl ring; and, finally, it was not the policy of his or other federal prosecutors’ offices to charge the customers in matters of prostitution.
Hard to prosecute. Not policy to charge customers. Remember that when you get caught in Nevada after paying $15 for a blow-job. If you are a nobody and buy a cheap whore, you will get busted. If you are a big-name politico, you get to apologize in public, say you are sorry, then wait for the whole thing to go away.
[tags]Eliot Spitzer, Hookers without penalty, High priced hookers, Scot Free[/tags]