Summary
Vietnam’s High People’s Court upheld the death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, convicted of embezzlement and bribery in a record $12 billion fraud case.
Lan can avoid execution by returning $9 billion (three-quarters of the stolen funds), potentially reducing her sentence to life imprisonment.
Her crimes caused widespread economic harm, including a bank run and $24 billion in government intervention to stabilize the financial system.
Lan has admitted guilt but prosecutors deemed her actions unprecedentedly damaging. She retains limited legal recourse through retrial procedures.
Sociopathic criminals aren’t to blame for how they are. They aren’t really in a position to change themselves nor have they decided to be this way.
Therefore the only punishment should be taking away their ability to harm others by limiting their freedom.
But if this is the sole punishment, I think hardly any would choose death. Why would they, if they could live a comfortable yet supervised and limited life? Key point is comfortable. That’s not what the vast majority of prisons are today which means allowing them to choose suicide is more or less a coerced death penalty if we’d just slap it onto the current system.