Co-blogger Ellen Podgor has an editorial on Law.Com (here) discussing the disparity between the sentences received by those who have cooperated in the recent round of corporate crime prosecutions and the CEOs and others who went to trial and received long prison terms.  Ellen argues: "The government needs cooperators to make their cases. Cooperators also provide a more efficient system that reduces the costs for a government prosecution. But when the risk of a conviction after trial is so distinct from that received for cooperating with the government, it diminishes the right to a trial by jury, an essential part of our constitutional democracy." (ph)