"Sadistic" is the word that Barrington Parker, a judge who rides the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, used to describe the position by federal prosecutors in New York that money manager Doug Whitman should remain confined even as the Supreme Court hears a case that could clarify insider trading law in a way that overturns his conviction. Bloomberg (here) and Reuters (here) have the details.
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, has gotten a lot of favorable press in New York City and nationally. But sadism is not a quality that is particularly attractive in an officer of the court, especially when the law being enforced is unclear enough to be the subject of a circuit split.
