if (Black is) charged, if there's a trial, and if there is a conviction, we would be looking at a sentence along the high end of the corporate executives who already have been convicted and sentenced in the United States - into two decades.
The government's prosecutions of corporate fraud will be judged based on the verdict in this case. If there is an acquittal, the government's corporate fraud prosecutions will be deemed at best a modest success. To the extent the government is being tested, this is the final exam.
There certainly existed a mindset in the late '90s by some that the corporate till was a personal entitlement.
Now anyone who wants to know what trial court judges in New York state are doing when confronted with conviction in a high-profile corporate fraud case, the answer is imposing a significant sentence.