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Category Archives: White Collar Crime

Justice Scalia’s Interpretation of Criminal Statutes And “Rule of Lenity.”

22 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Law, Civil Rights, Constitutions, Criminal Law, Federal Law, Federal Sentencing, Fourth Amendment - Search & Seizure, Law Enforcement, Research, Statutes, United States Supreme Court, White Collar Crime

≈ Comments Off on Justice Scalia’s Interpretation of Criminal Statutes And “Rule of Lenity.”

Tags

Above the Law (blog), Civil Rights, Criminal Law, Federal Criminal Statutes, Fourth Amendment, Justice Scalia, Matt Kaiser, Rule of Lenity, White Collar Crime

Scalia Weighs In On One of the Most Important Questions in the World of White-Collar Criminal Defense, by Matt Kaiser, Above The Law Blog

http://tinyurl.com/kahbnvm

Justice Scalia is not a man known for mild opinions. I hear the other Justices have voted him ‘least likely to say ‘this is a question on which reasonable minds could disagree.’

While a conservative, Scalia has done good work for those charged in criminal cases in recent years. He’s been good on Fourth Amendment issues, the Confrontation Clause, and federal sentencing.

And, at oral argument recently, on what is perhaps the most significant criminal justice issue of the day — how broadly we should interpret criminal statutes — Scalia has turned his considerable intellect again in a defense-friendly way.

How, you ask?

Whether to interpret a criminal statute broadly or narrowly is an intricate question. The ‘Rule of Lenity says that criminal statutes should be interpreted narrowly. Yet courts often read in a meta-‘Rule of Lenity’ that says that the Rule of Lenity itself should be interpreted narrowly.

Moreover, judicial review of the scope of a criminal statute is tricky. There are thousands of federal criminal statutes on the books and Congress makes more every year. About 95% of the time, people charged with federal crimes plead guilty. Courts are highly resistant to litigate the meaning and breadth of a federal criminal statute before trial, which means that challenges to the interpretation of a statute are possible in a very small number of cases.

What that means is that prosecutors’ interpretations of federal statutes are highly unlikely to be meaningfully challenged. And, when they are, generally they are interpreted broadly. . . .

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Big Banks, Big Business, And The DOJ.

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Consumer Law, Contract Law, Criminal Law, Intentional Misrepresentation, SEC, White Collar Crime

≈ Comments Off on Big Banks, Big Business, And The DOJ.

Tags

Banks, Bernard Arnault, Blair Hickman, Corporate Impunity, Department of Justice, Financial Crisis, Fraud, Jesse Eisinger, Judge Jed Rakoff, Lehman Brothers, ProPublica, Reddit, SEC

Big Banks, Business and Butter: Highlights From Our Q&A on Corporate Impunity, by Blair Hickman, ProPublica

http://bit.ly/1fCRh1R

Reporter Jesse Eisinger offers his thoughts on the lack of white-collar prosecutions, journalism and the Green Bay Packers.

*     *     *

I don’t think enough attention has been paid to the fact that the white collar laws are inadequate, so there haven’t been many proposed remedies. One thing the DoJ should use is the ‘willful blindness’ or ‘conscious disregard’ charge. As Judge Jed Rakoff wrote recently in the New York Review of Books: Such a charge ‘is a well-established basis on which federal prosecutors have asked juries to infer intent, including in cases involving complexities, such as accounting rules, at least as esoteric as those involved in the events leading up to the financial crisis. And while some federal courts have occasionally expressed qualifications about the use of the willful blindness approach to prove intent, the Supreme Court has consistently approved it.’ . . .

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How Do Jurors In A Recession Really Feel About The Financial Industry?

09 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Class Actions, Corporate Law, Finance and Banking Law, Jury Persuasion, Jury Selection, Litigation, Trial Tips and Techniques, Voir Dire, White Collar Crime

≈ Comments Off on How Do Jurors In A Recession Really Feel About The Financial Industry?

Tags

Banking Industry, Elizabeth Babbitt M.A., Financial Institutions, For The Defense Magazine, High-Interest Loans, Housing Crash, Jill Leibold Ph.D., Juror Bias, Jurors, Litigation Insights, Louis A. Huber III, Mortgage Foreclosure, Recession

Take This To The Bank: Jurors’ Evaluations Of Financial Industry Defendants During A Recession, by Jill Leibold Ph.D., Director, Jury Research, Elizabeth Babbitt, M.A., Consultant, and Louis A. Huber III, of Schlee, Huber, McMullen and Krause, LITIGATION INSIGHTS

http://tinyurl.com/nx84u56

[I]n the following article, published in DRI’s, For the Defense magazine, we wanted to evaluate biases in the way jurors would view banking or finance defendants. Given that almost all of Americans have felt they’ve been affected by the most recent recession, we conducted a study to gauge those positive or negative attitudes toward the financial industry as well as piece together how these issues could shape jurors’ perceptions toward banking and finance defendants come trial. . . .

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Divorce and Hidden Assets

17 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Divorce, Family Law, Finding Assets, Fraud, White Collar Crime

≈ Comments Off on Divorce and Hidden Assets

Tags

Assets, Divorce, Financial Institutions, Fraud, Fred Abrams, Money Laundering, White Collar Crime

Divorce & Hidden Assets: Alaskan Plastic Surgeon Accused Of Concealing Millions In Central America, by Fred Abrams, Asset Search Blog
(The first post in the Abram’s “Divorce & Hidden Assets” Series)
http://bit.ly/1gLpR72

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