For intended use only?

Sarbanes-Oxley doesn’t just over-regulate corporate governance and harm U.S. capital markets; it can be used by zealous prosecutors in many contexts. Such as prosecuting a lawyer who destroyed a church computer that had child pornography on it, because he didn’t guess that the government would be investigating the incident.

Sarbanes-Oxley doesn’t just over-regulate corporate governance and harm U.S. capital markets; it can be used by zealous prosecutors in many contexts. Such as prosecuting a lawyer who destroyed a church computer that had child pornography on it, because he didn’t guess that the government would be investigating the incident.

One Comment

  • Assuming the facts of the case are as stated in the newspaper article, it is clear that the lawyer knew that he was destroying evidence of a crime. While, as in the case of the RICO law, prosecutors appear to be using it beyond what it was intended for, I have no sympathy for this lawyer.

    By the way, isn’t there a law that directly pertains to what he did? Can you deliberately destroy evidence of a crime as long as the police are not investigating the crime? Moreover, since a lawyer is supposed to be an officer of the court, wouldn’t he have a greater obligation to preserve the evidence?