Occasionally people inquire as to the different treatment of different kinds of persons in our legal system. As the U.S. Supreme Court has explained, corporations are persons just like my readers. The only difference between a corporate person and a human person is that when a human person breaks the law, the human person depending on the offense, may go to jail.
When a corporate person breaks the law, the corporate person may be punished, but is never sent to jail.
The question that arises out of this disparate treatment is how do “three strike laws” work when a corporate person is a repeat offender. Three strike laws provide that if a human person has three offenses (misdemeanors or felonies, depending on how a state statute is drafted) the human person is sentenced to life in prison.
The question is relevant these days because in the past years there have been many occasions on which large banks have been assessed fines in the millions, and frequently, billions of dollars for corporate misconduct. Almost all the large banks that have been fined are repeat offenders.