> being a lower level peon shouldn't be a get out of jail free card
At some point, every society has to decide where to draw the line at "this much punishment is enough punishment" when the crime is basically setting value on fire. If you don't, you end up with the whole society on trial ("Why aren't we prosecuting the people who gave them the money? Surely had they done their homework, they would have known...").
... and we end up drawing the line slightly on the side of "let the least-powerful guilty go" because there's heavy incentive to get them to turn on their bosses so our society can hold the most powerful (most equipped to hide their bad behavior and understand how to subvert the law) accountable at all. This is very much a problem at the intersection of justice and the realpolitik of enforcement.
(... technically, every German citizen was a Nazi. They didn't end World War II by nuking Germany until it glowed).
At some point, every society has to decide where to draw the line at "this much punishment is enough punishment" when the crime is basically setting value on fire. If you don't, you end up with the whole society on trial ("Why aren't we prosecuting the people who gave them the money? Surely had they done their homework, they would have known...").
... and we end up drawing the line slightly on the side of "let the least-powerful guilty go" because there's heavy incentive to get them to turn on their bosses so our society can hold the most powerful (most equipped to hide their bad behavior and understand how to subvert the law) accountable at all. This is very much a problem at the intersection of justice and the realpolitik of enforcement.
(... technically, every German citizen was a Nazi. They didn't end World War II by nuking Germany until it glowed).