Crouch Sr. (the abbreviated version) (and jr.)

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 154659

Bookish Rose:
> I don't see how any judge could sentance a screaming kid
> the same as Bellatrix, who was defiant throughout the trial, openly
> claiming alligence to Voldermort. I honestly believe that if Barty
> had been acquitted he could have realised if maybe not the moral
> implications then at the very least the legal repecutions of his
> behavoir.

zgirnius:
We do not know the details for sure, but it seems to have been an 
open-and-shut case. Any sentence other than life in Azkaban would go 
against the law as it has been presented to us in canon. The crime of 
which he was found guilty was the use of an Unforgivable Curse 
(Cruciatus), a crime for which the automatic sentence is life in 
Azkaban, (unless, of course, it is done by Ministry employees who 
have been granted an exemption, a circumstance which certainly did 
not apply in his case).

Now, if he didn't actually cast a single Crucio during the Longbottom 
attack, the judge might have had some wiggle room. But we have no 
indication that was the case.