I’m delighted to report that Harvey Silverglate will be guest-blogging this week about his new book, Three Felonies a Day. Mr. Silverglate, who is of counsel to the Boston law firm of Zalkind, Rodriguez, Lunt & Duncan LLP, is a practicing lawyer who specializes in criminal defense, civil liberties, and academic freedom/student rights law. His work has ranged widely, including drug prosecutions, draft and riot cases in the ‘60s and ‘70s, bank and securities fraud, bribery and extortion, espionage, tax evasion, police misconduct, murder and manslaughter, habeas corpus proceedings, money laundering, and desertion (tried at a court martial).
He has also written a great deal about these subjects: For nearly four decades, he has been the criminal law and civil liberties columnist for The Boston Phoenix, an alternative weekly newspaper, and he frequently contributes commentary to Forbes.com. In the past, he has been a regular civil liberties columnist for The National Law Journal, and his op-ed pieces have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. His articles and book reviews have been published in the Harvard Law Review, The New York Times Book Review, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, The Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Media Studies Journal, Cato Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Reason magazine, and elsewhere. The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses (with Alan Charles Kors) was his first full-length book; published by The Free Press in October 1998, it is still available in paperback under the Harper/Perennial imprint from HarperCollins (published October 1999).
Following the publication of The Shadow University, Mr. Silverglate and Prof. Kors founded the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a non-profit foundation dedicated to preserving and enlarging academic freedom, due process, and freedom of speech and conscience on American college campuses. Readers of this blog know that I have long respected FIRE, which is now 10 years old; it’s one of the most effective and important legal advocacy groups in the nation.
Mr. Silverglate’s new book, Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (New York: Encounter Books, September 2009), argues that the Department of Justice targets all segments of civil society by means of abusive prosecutions based upon vague federal criminal statutes and regulations. The book chronicles the federal prosecutions of members of various professions, including doctors, lawyers, public officials, artists, journalists, accountants and accounting firms, and pharmaceutical industry companies and representatives. This week, Mr. Silverglate will blog about the material that he covers in the book.
Jerry says:
Very nice! Thanks for lining up such interesting guest bloggers for us, Eugene.
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December 14, 2009, 1:48 pmbob says:
Always nice to see someone focus on problems confronting the most wealthy and powerful in our society.
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December 14, 2009, 2:01 pmJames T. Carrington says:
Bob, your comment is meaningless... Cases affecting those groups listed above will often have ramifications to blog-commenting factory workers like yourself. Or you can cheer when the big rich guy gets stomped by the govt, if that makes you feel something positive.
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December 14, 2009, 2:57 pmOrin Kerr says:
Actually, I had the same reaction as Bob. All things considered, I am a lot more worried about the prosecution of the poor and powerless than I am about the prosecution of the lawyers and pharmaceutical companies.
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December 14, 2009, 4:08 pmShelbyC says:
FWIW, I’m equally concerned about both of them.
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December 14, 2009, 4:55 pmDave N. says:
I agree with ShelbyC. I might note that overzealous prosecutors who go after the rich and powerful may have even less compunction about going after the poor and powerless.
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December 14, 2009, 8:56 pmDecember 15 roundup says:
[...] Silverglate, author of Three Felonies a Day, guestblogging at Volokh Conspiracy on, inter alia, “honest services [...]
FluffyRoss says:
I am enjoying the book. It’s powerfully-written, readable, and alive...not the ponderous, skimmable palaver one often sees in books legal.
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December 16, 2009, 7:17 amMarc J. Randazza says:
Wow! Harvey Silverglate blogging here!!! That’s just awesome. Harvey is one of my heroes, and someone I wanted to be like “when I grew up.” I can’t wait to read some of his work here.
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December 16, 2009, 11:04 pmInteresting News from Elsewhere « La Flog says:
[...] Conspiracy has another awesome guest blogger. Harvey Silverglate is blogging about the findings in his new book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. The [...]
Harvey Silverglate says:
Reading THREE FELONIES A DAY will demonstrate that in fact the Department of Justice is an equal-opportunity victimizer. The reasons why a large number of cases are prosecutions of the wealthy and powerful are (1) I wanted to show that the government goes after everyone, and (2) only the wealthy can afford to actually content these indictments and go to trial; nearly 95% of those indicted by the Feds plead guilty, for the reasons laid out in my book. I can see from some of the readers’ comments on the Conspiracy that the DOJ’s media machine has washed quite a few brains out there, alas. Being overtrusting of the Department of Justice is not wise, given the record. HAS
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December 18, 2009, 10:16 amFluffyRoss says:
One more thing, so far as your book and a worthwhile mention or future footnote...the prosecution of insurance broker Mickey Segal in Illinois. There was a relevant state statute, but along came, contemporaneous with the investigation/prosecution of Segal, a federal statute covering this state offense. In addition, warrantless searches were conducted of his offices, as well as the sale of his businesses at a firesale to the whistleblowing employees (employees who may have been cooperating ab initio). I don’t recall all the details, but it’s a fascinating study of the Northern District of Illinois feds gone mad...almost as quixotic as the now-silenced Fitzgerald.
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December 19, 2009, 10:50 amHarvey Silverglate says:
I assume the comment was mean sarcastically, but I’ll respond seriously nonetheless. If one reads my book THREE FELONIES A DAY, one sees a very wide range of citizens — some quite ordinary citizens — who fall prey to these prosecutions. I intentionally included in the book some prosecutions of the wealthy and the powerful, to demonstrate that the feds don’t only go after the powerless. But plenty of these cases, including quite a few in my book, are prosecutions of quite ordinary folk. I think it is crucial to understand that the federal prosecutorial abuse problem does not go away simply by giving defendants good lawyers. The techniques are such that no one is immune. This problem is truly a problem for all, which is why I’m optimistic that ultimately there will be an organized backlash against the Department of Justice for what it’s doing to civil society.
One other point: I discuss the prosecution of doctors who specialize in treating chronic pain. I don’t know whether the writer deems such doctors to be among the wealthy and powerful members of society. But the real victims of these outrageous “narcotics abuse” prosecutions are not limited to the physicians: This country has a very large number of patients who suffer unnecessary and intractable pain because their physicians refuse to prescribe adequate pain meds. It is easy for a doctor to avoid indictment: He simply has to under-prescribe pain meds and allow his patients to suffer. Talk to any pain specialist and I bet he or she says the same thing: “I practice defensive medicine with pain patients.” HAS
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December 21, 2009, 4:17 pmHarvey Silverglate says:
The heart of the technique is this: First they go after the unpopular. If the unpopular are rich and famous, that’s fine to the feds — there’s more publicity in it for them. Eventually, they go after all of us. They are now at that point. If we make this into a class war, we’ll get absolutely nowhere. You cannot defend the rights of the poor and powerless and not defend the rights of the wealthy and powerful when the same techniques are used against all. I do a lot of First Amendment law, and I recall the title of Nat Hentoff’s recent book: FREE SPEECH FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE. It’s not the way to fight a war for restoration of civil liberties. I am reminded of a criticism aimed at me recently — I am currently representing a number of high school teachers and students who are protesting the constitutionality of the censorship of a state-enacted collection of curricular materials on the “Armenian genocide.” (If you’re interested, the case is noted on my website, http://www.harveysilverglate.com.) Some members of the Armenian community have nastily charged that (paraphrasing) “Silverglate would not be litigating this as a First Amendment issue if, instead of involving deniers of the Armenian genocide, he were dealing with those who deny the Jewish Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis.” I had to remind my critic that some years ago, during Boston’s school busing crisis, I in fact represented three members of the American Nazi Party in the South Boston District Court on “disorderly conduct” charges for demonstrating against a federal school desegregation order. We either do, or do not, believe in “equal protection of the laws.”
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December 21, 2009, 4:27 pmHarvey Silverglate says:
Thank you for this comment. It’s bracing to see that I succeeded at least to some extent in reaching an audience that does not want to plow through a ponderous legal text. Describing legal cases in lay language is a real challenge. I’ve been trying to do it for four decades in my various journalistic endeavors, and, still, the manuscript for THREE FELONIES A DAY went through some two dozen revisions and took me 4 1/2 years rather than the original 2 years I anticipated. So your comment is much appreciated. HAS
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December 21, 2009, 4:32 pmHarvey Silverglate says:
Hey, Mark: When I grow up, I want to be like YOU!!! Thanks for the favorable comment. Every so often it’s nice for a criminal defense lawyer to be called something printable!! HAS
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December 21, 2009, 4:33 pm