Most corporate crimes are punished with fines, infact corporate fines are annually between $426 billion to $1.7 trillion. This case in specific Ford knew they were in hot water. They were aware of the issue with the cars, and they had done minimal efforts to solve the issue. In the opening arguments of their case, the prosecution lead with “Ford sacrificed human life for profit”.
With corporations they benefit from how large they are, in the case of ford, the defense team had a budget rumored to be around a million dollars, while the prosecution had a mere $20,000. They use behind the scenes tacticts to hide information from the court room, as did the local counsel who was brought on the defense. The local counsel who just so happened to be the best friend of the judge. All of these factors helped ford and their defense secure a verdict of not-guilty.
The facts are, Ford was aware of the issue in their vehicle. They deemed the fix too expensive and cut corners in standard design testing that would eliminate this issue. These neglectful acts resulted in more lives lost than the three girls in this one crash. It is unfortunate that these girls died due to preventable and simple design errors. This company got away with their gross neglect for human life and they made millions off of it.