Hacker News Reader

The Ltd or LLC after many company names refer to the Limited Liability that those forms of companies confer, that protect individuals within them from personal liability. Corporations were intentionally a lot like people even before Citizens United. There's also a concept called Piercing the Corporate Veil that is intended specifically for penetrating through these legal protections in certain cases.

That limited liability is a civil one. How would you even charge a corporation with a criminal act, eg murder? Corporations cannot act, regardless of their personhood. Piercing the corporate veil, again, is a civil issue.

The supreme court says corporations are people and have the rights of people (e.g. free speech). If they're people then they are subject to the criminal codes that people are subject to. I don't know how you carry out such punishments, ask the 5 guys who decided to make that the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood