All-day Cato conference tomorrow (register or watch online) has a line-up that includes attorney Ken White, civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate, Judge Shira Scheindlin, and Families Against Mandatory Minimums vice president Kevin Ring, with Cato researchers moderating each panel.
Posts Tagged ‘crime and punishment’
Senator Mike Lee interviewed
18:24 well spent: Caleb Brown interviews Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on separation of powers, criminal justice, the electoral college, executive powers and many other topics [Cato Podcast series]
Oregon occupiers acquitted: one juror’s statement
An Oregon jury has reached a verdict acquitting the occupiers of the Malheur wildlife refuge (earlier) of conspiracy charges. In seeking to explain this outcome, it may help to know about a detailed letter from a juror in the case, published in The Oregonian. Obviously, one juror’s view is not definitive in such a case.
I am indebted to reader J.B. for the following rough paraphrase of some themes and highlights of the juror’s letter:
* We didn’t intend to affirm or endorse the defendants’ views.
* We were certainly convinced that the defendants’ actions caused a lot of real-world disruption and damage.
* We don’t want to encourage other people to do stuff like that and regret the possibility that the acquittal might do that.
* The government had a complicated theory that, according to the law as the judge explained it to us, made the defendants’ subjective intentions more significant than the actual effects of their actions.
* We didn’t think the evidence about the defendants’ subjective intentions was strong enough to meet the legal standard for conviction under the government’s complicated theory as the judge explained the law to us.
* We’re frankly kind of puzzled as to why the government didn’t charge less complicated crimes like criminal trespass that might have been easier to get a conviction for.
All of which is not short enough to fit on a bumper sticker. The report by the Oregonian’s Maxine Bernstein, again, is here.
Due process and the Megaupload case
Feds to fugitive principals of file-storage website: if you resist extradition, we’ll seize your assets and you have no right to offer evidence they were innocently obtained. Cato has filed an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit arguing that the government is overstepping the defendants’ rights [Ilya Shapiro]
White House panel questions validity of criminal forensics
“Much of the forensic analysis used in criminal trials isn’t scientifically valid, according to a draft report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The report… raises questions about the use of bite-mark, hair, footwear, firearm and tool-mark analysis routinely used as evidence in thousands of trials annually in state and federal courts.” [Gary Fields and Kate O’Keeffe, WSJ]
Crime and punishment roundup
- Quebec waiter arrested after seafood puts allergic customer in coma [CBC]
- Two Black Lives Matter groupings have issued agendas, one zany leftism, the other directed at nuts-and-bolts criminal justice system reform. Media: “Door 1, please.” [Ed Krayewski]
- Conservative lawprof Mike Rappaport on DEA’s “absurd,” “ridiculous” refusal to take marijuana off Schedule I [Law and Liberty] Recommended: Scott Greenfield and David Meyer-Lindenberg interview Julie Stewart of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Cato Institute alum [Fault Lines]
- “Criminal defense bar sides with business lobby in False Claims Act case” [Alison Frankel, Reuters on State Farm case before Supreme Court]
- 6th Circuit: amendments to Michigan sex offender registry law impose retroactive, hence unconstitutional, punishment [Jonathan Adler, Scott Greenfield]
- “Criminalizing Entrepreneurs: The regulatory state is also a prison state” [F.H. Buckley, American Conservative]
“Believe the victim,” or not
“Lochte’s story shows one good reason why we should not uncritically believe people who claim to be crime survivors.” [Andrew Fleishman, Fault Lines]
Crime and punishment roundup
- Virginia “one of a minority of states that suspend driving privileges — in most cases, automatically — for failing to pay court costs and fines arising from offenses completely unrelated to driving.” [Washington Post editorial]
- D.C. Circuit “Rules DOJ Discovery Blue Book Off-Limits … For Now” [Jonathan Blanks, Cato]
- “The New York Times Knows Florida’s Self-Defense Law Is Bad but Can’t Figure Out Why” [Jacob Sullum]
- “We often hear that almost no one goes to prison simply for using marijuana.” But add “near a school”… [David Henderson]
- A forensics roundup from Radley Balko;
- “When Everything Is a Crime: The Overregulation of Ordinary Life” [Harvey Silverglate conversation with Reason’s Nick Gillespie]
Justice Dept. case against FedEx collapses mid-trial
Big news from federal court in San Francisco: we’ve repeatedly questioned the U.S. Department of Justice’s adventurous decision to charge Federal Express with crimes for, in essence, refusing to snoop into its customers’ packages and business. From our post two years ago:
The federal government has prevailed on a grand jury to indict Federal Express for servicing what it should have known were illicit online pharmacy operations. FedEx says it repeatedly asked the government to supply a list of shippers it considered illicit so that it could cut off service, but that the government refused; the Department of Justice contends that circumstantial evidence should have been enough to alert the package shipment company. …
And last month, quoting Washington Legal Foundation’s Cory Andrews:
“Federal prosecutors have accused FedEx of knowingly shipping illegal drugs in interstate commerce and laundering money by merely doing its job: delivering packages (in this case, from online Internet pharmacies) to their intended recipients and getting paid for the service. …To avoid the very sort of ‘gotcha’ prosecution at issue here, Congress inserted exceptions for common carriers in each of the relevant statutes” authorizing shipment of prescription medications and controlled substances when done in the usual course of business….
Now, this [Associated Press/ABC News]:
A criminal trial nearly two years in the making alleging FedEx knowingly delivered illegal prescription drugs to dealers and addicts ended suddenly Friday when prosecutors moved to dismiss all charges against the shipping giant.
U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer, who had been highly critical of the government’s positions as the trial unfolded, granted the motion to dismiss: on Friday he called FedEx “factually innocent” and said the withdrawal of charges was “in the court’s view, entirely consistent with the government’s overarching obligation to seek justice even at the expense of some embarrassment.”
FedEx spokesman Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement Friday that the company has always been innocent and the case should never have been brought.
“The government should take a very hard look at how they made the tremendously poor decision to file these charges,” he said. “Many companies would not have had the courage or the resources to defend themselves against false charges.”
Many in the field of white-collar legal defense have warned large corporations, particularly those with businesses built upon relationships of public trust, to cut a deal with the federal government rather than try to withstand the full force it can bring to bear in a prosecution. But FedEx, for one, has shown that it is still possible to defy the authorities and win. Mike Koehler at FCPA Professor says that might help lay to rest what has been called the “Arthur Andersen effect” in which indictment is itself seen as tantamount to corporate death.
P.S.: Our friend James Copland of the Manhattan Institute has this observation (via email):
What’s remarkable here is that UPS agreed to a $40 million non-prosecution agreement — and to hire a new corporate officer and an independent auditor looking over their shoulder and reporting to the U.S. Attorney — for the same alleged conduct.
[cross-posted at Cato at Liberty]
More from Jim Copland and Rafael Mangual at Real Clear Markets: “Judge Breyer observed that the government had failed to show any ill intent, and he pointedly noted that prosecutors have not gone after the U.S. Postal Service for the same conduct…. glad FedEx called the government’s bluff and won.” And: Eugene Volokh; George Leef, Forbes (and thanks for quote).
Feds overreach in prosecution of FedEx for failure to snoop
“Federal prosecutors have accused FedEx of knowingly shipping illegal drugs in interstate commerce and laundering money by merely doing its job: delivering packages (in this case, from online Internet pharmacies) to their intended recipients and getting paid for the service. …To avoid the very sort of ‘gotcha’ prosecution at issue here, Congress inserted exceptions for common carriers in each of the relevant statutes” authorizing shipment of prescription medications and controlled substances when done in the usual course of business.
While courts have generated no case law authoritatively interpreting these exemptions in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and the Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act (FDCA), “the need to do so had never presented itself because no prosecutor had ever dared to bring such a dubious indictment in the previous 45 years of the CSA’s existence.” [Cory Andrews, Washington Legal Foundation; earlier (“Feds indict FedEx for not snooping into packages”)]