Earlier this month, I did a blog entry looking at how Bernard Madoff's victims wanted the fraudster to get the full 150 year jail sentence. Many of the victims were not high flyers. Madoff ripped off widows and war veterans too. He didn't discriminate.

Now, Madoff's lawyers are telling the court that 12 years would be enough. In their letter to Judge Denny Chin, they urge the court to effectively ignore the "emotion and hysteria". "We believe that the unified tone of the victim statements suggests a desire for a type of mob vengeance that, if countenanced here, would negate and render meaningless the role of the Court,'' the lawyers wrote. "Instead, we respectfully submit that it is the duty of the Court to set aside the emotion and hysteria attendant to this case and render a sentence that is just and proportionate to the conduct at issue."

Madoff, they say, is 71 and he doesn't have that many more years left so 12 years would be a fair sentence.

But Madoff's victims take a different view. They have told the Boston Herald that 12 years is fine, as long as he serves 50 of these terms in a row and is "hung by his toes".