The Volokh Conspiracy

Writing in the Arizona Law Review, Chuck Weisselberg and Su Li have a very interesting article, Big Law’s Sixth Amendment: The Rise of Corporate White-Collar Practices in Large U.S. Law Firms. The abstract:

Over the last three decades, corporate white-collar criminal defense and investigations practices have become established within the nation’s largest law firms. It did not used to be this way. White-collar work was not considered a legal specialty. And, historically, lawyers in the leading civil firms avoided criminal matters. But several developments occurred at once: firms grew dramatically, the norms within the firms changed, and new federal crimes and prosecution policies created enormous business opportunities for the large firms. Using a unique data set, this Article profiles the Big Law partners now in the white-collar practice area, most of whom are male former federal prosecutors. With additional data and a case study, the Article explores the movement of partners from government and from other firms, the profitability of corporate white-collar work, and the prosecution policies that facilitate and are in turn affected by the growth of this lucrative practice within Big Law. These developments have important implications for the prosecution function, the wider criminal defense bar, the law firms, and women in public and private white-collar practices.

What are the most draconian three-strikes laws currently on the books? Do any states still have a 25 year mandatory minimum for the third strike?

I recently finished the new book by the late Bill Stuntz, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice. My co-blogger Paul Cassell reviewed it here in the Wall Street Journal, and I wanted to blog my own thoughts about the book. My basic take is that it’s a great book, with many important insights. It’s the most interesting book on the criminal justice system that I’ve read in a long time, and perhaps ever. At the same time, I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced: Stuntz makes a number of claims that strike me as questionable. Plus, his recommendations for reform stuck me as a bit utopian. In this post, I’ll introduce Bill’s basic theory, and then offer some thoughts in response. In a future post, I’ll turn to Stuntz’s recommendations, and again offer my own reaction.

I. The Basic Argument of Stuntz’s Book

Stuntz’s argument starts with a widely-heard set of complaints about today’s criminal justice system: Too many people are in prison, too many laws are too punitive, and criminal cases are generally resolved by guilty pleas guided by prosecutors rather than trials resolved by juries or judges. The question is, why? In Stuntz’s view, the major reason is that criminal justice has lost its local character.

In the 19th Century, Stuntz explains, criminal law and justice was largely local. There was a lot of variation by region, to be sure. But on the whole, local police captured local criminals, who were charged by local prosecutors and tried before local juries using criminal law standards from the common law that were vague and left considerable discretion to the jury. In Stuntz’s view, that system worked pretty well – much better than we realize today. Criminal punishment was relatively rare, and punishment reflected community norms and senses of justice. According to Stuntz, a range of forces have slowly eliminated the local character of criminal law. And losing the local character of the law has made it more punitive and less fair.

What changed? First, the shape of criminal law doctrine came to be seen as a legislative question, not a judicial question. Criminal law used to be fixed: It was settled by the basic doctrines of the common law. As criminal law became seen as a field subject to control of the state and federal elected branches, criminal law began to expand. Because most see themselves as potential crime victims rather than potential criminals, especially in the aggregate at the state and federal level, politicians have a strong incentive to be seen as “tough on crime” by making criminal law broader and harsher. And because most voters don’t directly experience crime levels or the effect of punishment on their own communities — most voters don’t live in high-crime neighborhood — they tend to be receptive to the “tough on crime” message even if the law is already tough. The system thus tends towards harsher and harsher punishment, especially at the state and federal level. Even local prosecutors have new incentives to be extra harsh, as state governments rather than localities have come to pay for the prisons: Local prosecutors can get all the public relations benefits of “locking them away” without having to pay the bill for costly imprisonment.

This trend was facilitated by the Supreme Court’s failure to keep legislatures in check. In Stuntz’s view, the Equal Protection clause should have been a major check on legislative and executive action in the criminal justice field. The Courts should have interpreted it to ensure substantive fairness in the laws, and especially to eliminate racial discrimination. But the Court instead gutted the Equal Protection clause in the 19th Century in United States v. Cruikshank. At the same time, the Supreme Court adopted an expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause as far back as the 19th Century, allowing Congress to federalize morals legislation based on a simple showing that something crossed state lines. By taking a deferential position that allowed racial discrimination to flourish at the state level and enabled Congress to federalize criminal law, the Supreme Court wrongly let the political branches do as they pleased. Legislatures could raise punishments as high as they liked; police could engage in pretext prosecutions, and target minority groups; and prosecutors could add lots overlapping charges to induce guilty pleas.

Stuntz argues that the harshness of the criminal justice system was inadvertently aided by well-meaning progressive reformers. Reformers tried to make the system more fair, but their efforts backfired. In the 19th Century, criminal law was vague and procedural rights were few: Trials were cheap, they occurred all the time, and juries had a lot of discretion under common law standards. In response, 20th Century reformers tried to rationalize and clarify criminal law standards by replacing vague common law definitions of crimes with new clear ones (such as the Model Penal Code). The idea was to make criminal law more predictable and rational, but the perverse effect was to greatly diminish the role of the jury: Whereas traditional criminal law doctrines had left lots of discretion for the jury, the new clear standards gave defense attorneys very little to argue about. The result was more guilty pleas and fewer trials.

At the same time, the Warren Court’s criminal procedure revolution gave defendants more rights with the aim of making the criminal justice system more fair. To some extent, this was a belated response to the 19th century Supreme Court’s failure to take the Equal Protection clause seriously. But in Stuntz’s view, using the Bill of Rights to focus on the procedure of criminal justice (the law of investigations) rather than using the Equal Protection clause to focus on the substance of criminal law (definitions of crimes) only made the problem worse. More procedural rights raised the costs of trials. Because legislatures were free to alter the substance of criminal law however they pleased, legislatures responded to the new procedural rights by broadening criminal laws, jacking up criminal penalties, and giving prosecutors wide discretion to pressure defendants to plead guilty in exchange for a “deal.” Perversely, the result of giving defendants more rights was to create an environment in which most defendants were pressured into waiving all their rights in practice by pleading guilty. The Supreme Court’s regulating procedure instead of substance just made the substance worse instead of making the procedure better.

II. A Few Thoughts In Response

I find Stuntz’s argument fascinating. He makes a lot of intriguing claims, and there’s a ton to chew on here. It’s the kind of book I want to mull over and read again, which is about the highest compliment I can give. For what it’s worth, my initial “mull” finds me partially persuaded and partially unpersuaded. Some of what Stuntz says rings true, but some of his claims raise a lot of question marks.

Stuntz’s basic narrative of the need for localism strikes me as persuasive and really important. His focus on the need for criminal justice to stay attentive to the needs of the community — and the dangers when decisionmakers don’t reflect the views of the community most directly impacted by crime — rings true to me. To some extent, Stuntz’s view is the classic argument for local decisionmaking: People can take care of themselves better than others they don’t know, as they are more closely tied to the facts of what is happening and they can exercise judgment based on local opinions. So on the basic gist of the argument, I’m pretty impressed.

Stuntz’s effort to link the Supreme Court’s caselaw on substantive criminal law and criminal procedure is also a terrific and insightful move — one that is based on and extends what what is probably Stuntz’s most important article, The Uneasy Relationship Between Criminal Procedure and Criminal Justice, published in the Yale Law Journal in 1997. Uneasy Relationship is a favorite of mine, and I was glad to see its insights take a prominent place in Stuntz’s book.

At the same time, I had some significant concerns with parts of the argument. Let me focus on two parts in particular. First, I thought Stuntz had a rather rosy view of the past of criminal justice. His conclusion that the system more or less worked in the past strikes me as optimistic. Much of his argument was based on data like crime rates and imprisonment rates that I found hard to assess. I found myself unsure of whether to accept the data as accurate, and I was dubious that we can say very much about how the criminal justice system worked assuming all the data is right Take the fact that crime rates have plummeted since the early 1990s: Does that really suggest that we’re doing something right today that we were doing wrong twenty years ago? Or is this just the fortunate byproduct of banning lead, or something else? Stuntz doesn’t have much of an answer for why crime rates have plummeted in the last 20 years — he discusses it at length, and concludes it is a real puzzle — which to my mind reflects a skepticism that could be equally well applied to the causes of crime rates in the past.

Similarly, I think the differences between the common law of crimes and the more modern approach to criminal law are much more modest than Stuntz suggests. There are some differences, yes. But on the whole, they’re minor: The basic elements of the basic crimes today are pretty similar to what they were in Blackstone’s time. And some defenses, like necessity, are generally considered broader today than they were in the past (to the extent they existed at all). As a result, it seems dubious to me that changes in approaches to criminal law played a significant role in changing the nature of the criminal justice system. It’s an intriguing idea, and fits the classic Stuntzian unintended consequences mold. But I’m just not sure it works. If there were such an important difference between the common law standard and the modern standard, wouldn’t we expect to see a difference between the outcomes in jurisdictions that today still retain the gist of the common law approach and those that have widely adopted the modern approach? Stuntz doesn’t suggest that there is such a difference, and I don’t know of one. So I’m skeptical that that there is an effect such as what Stuntz mentions, or at least that it is significant.

Of course, it may be that the law has operated differently, rather than the doctrine is different. Slight differences in trial procedure can have a huge difference in how the law is applied. Take the case of the trial judge’s gate-keeping function. These days, trial judges play a major gate-keeping role: If a defendant wants to put on a defense, for example, the trial judge has to find enough evidence to support it before it can be argued to the jury. If there were different gate-keeping functions in an earlier time, then the law could be applied very differently even if the formal doctrine were the same. If judges used to give all the issues to the jury, for example, the jury would have a lot more discretion than they do today because they would be invited to consider more defenses, not because the details of the jury instructions on the law would be any different. I don’t know enough about the history of criminal trials to know if that gate-keeping function has changed much, but I suspect that is more likely source of jury discretion than changes in doctrine.

Radley Balko has an interesting piece at Huffington Post on the ways in which the War on Drugs creates perverse incentives for police departments:

Arresting people for assaults, beatings and robberies doesn’t bring money back to police departments, but drug cases do in a couple of ways. First, police departments across the country compete for a pool of federal anti-drug grants. The more arrests and drug seizures a department can claim, the stronger its application for those grants.

“The availability of huge federal anti-drug grants incentivizes departments to pay for SWAT team armor and weapons, and leads our police officers to abandon real crime victims in our communities in favor of ratcheting up their drug arrest stats,” said former Los Angeles Deputy Chief of Police Stephen Downing. Downing is now a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an advocacy group of cops and prosecutors who are calling for an end to the drug war.

“When our cops are focused on executing large-scale, constitutionally questionable raids at the slightest hint that a small-time pot dealer is at work, real police work preventing and investigating crimes like robberies and rapes falls by the wayside,” Downing said.

And this problem is on the rise all over the country. Last year, police in New York City arrested around 50,000 people for marijuana possession. Pot has been decriminalized in New York since 1977, but displaying the drug in public is still a crime. So police officers stop people who look “suspicious,” frisk them, ask them to empty their pockets, then arrest them if they pull out a joint or a small amount of marijuana. They’re tricked into breaking the law. According to a report from Queens College sociologist Harry Levine, there were 33,775 such arrests from 1981 to 1995. Between 1996 and 2010 there were 536,322.

Several NYPD officers have alleged that in some precincts, police officers are asked to meet quotas for drug arrests. Former NYPD narcotics detective Stephen Anderson recently testified in court that it’s common for cops in the department to plant drugs on innocent people to meet those quotas — a practice for which Anderson himself was then on trial.

At the same time, there’s increasing evidence that the NYPD is paying less attention to violent crime. In an explosive Village Voice series last year, current and former NYPD officers told the publication that supervising officers encouraged them to either downgrade or not even bother to file reports for assault, robbery and even sexual assault.

Even when police officials don’t consciously prioritize drug crimes ahead of violent crimes, the vast expenditure of law enforcement resources on the former probably reduces the amount of police effort that can be devoted to the latter.

Later in the article, Balko notes that the War on Drugs also incentivizes police departments to shift resources away from violent crime because drug busts allow them to earn extra money through asset forfeiture, while solving violent crime usually does not:

The most perverse policy may be asset forfeiture. Under civil asset forfeiture, police can seize property from people merely suspected of drug crimes. So long as police can show even the slightest link of drug activity to a car, some cash, or even a home, they can seize it. In the majority of cases, most or all of the seized cash goes back to the police department. In some cases, the department has taken possession of cars as well, but generally non-cash property is auctioned off, with the proceeds then going back to the department. An innocent person who has property seized must go to court and prove his property was earned legitimately, even if he was never charged with a crime. The process of going to court can often be more expensive than the value of the property itself.

Asset forfeiture not only encourages police agencies to use resources and manpower on drug crimes at the expense of violent crimes, it also provides an incentive for police agencies to actually wait until drugs are on the streets before making a bust.

I wrote about the ways in asset forfeiture threaten constitutional property rights here.

State legislators in Ohio are considering legislation that would enable criminal prosecutors to insist on a jury trial even when a criminal defendant waives that rate and asks for a bench trial. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

Ohio prosecutors want to change the law to give themselves veto power when a criminal defendant chooses to have his case heard by a judge instead of a jury. . . .

“The whole jurisprudence system is based on the jury system,” [state legislator Lynn] Slaby said. “Until we do away with juries entirely, it’s more fair to have both sides have a right to a jury trial.”

As the article notes, this proposal is not revolutionary. Although criminal defendants have a constitutional right to trial by jury, they are not guaranteed the ability to waive this right.

I have nothing useful to add about the awful events at Penn State, both the child molestation and the failure of various people to properly intervene to stop it. But I do want to second Jonah Goldberg’s disgust at the rioting students, rioting that just adds an extra level of nastiness and moral failure to an already horrible chain of events.

That’s what it looks like, given a newly enacted state statute. Until recently, Texas Penal Code § 31.03 provided that theft is “a state jail felony if,” among other things, “the value of the property stolen is less than $20,000 and the property stolen is insulated or noninsulated tubing, rods, water gate stems, wire, or cable that consists of at least 50 percent: (i) aluminum; (ii) bronze; or (iii) copper.” But the new statute deletes the text from “insulated” to “50 percent,” so that the new version now makes theft a felony when “the value of the property stolen is less than $20,000 and the property stolen is … (i) aluminum; (ii) bronze; (iii) copper; or (iv) brass.”

According to Wikipedia, most pre-1982 pennies would qualify, being copper, bronze, or brass, but probably more recent pennies would as well, if “brass” is just read as being a “metal alloy[] consisting mainly of copper and zinc.” In any case, an aluminum can would pretty clearly qualify — and, again, we’re talking about the theft being treated as a felony. And, of course, that means you’ll lose your right to keep and bear arms as well as facing a longer sentence. Or am I missing something? Thanks to Charles Blevins for the pointer.

No, said the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday in Commonwealth v. Hart (Sept. 28), over one judge’s dissent (and with an interesting short concurrence). Here’s an excerpt from the majority opinion:

[W]e determine that a “lure” involves the making of a promise of pleasure or gain, the furnishing of a temptation or enticement, or the performance of some other affirmative act calculated to strongly induce another individual to take a particular action, usually and most often likely to result in his or her harm.

By contrast, the acts of merely extending a plain invitation, or making a neutral offer to another person, which are unaccompanied by any inducement intended or designed to increase the probability that the person will accept, do not, in their most common understanding, constitute endeavors to “lure.” Such acts simply do not involve the additional and extra element of powerful persuasion designed to influence the person to take action, which is the sine qua non of a lure. See Adamo, 637 A.2d at 307 (holding that a simple offer of a ride by a friend or neighbor does not constitute a “lure” as that term is usually defined, as the offer is not accompanied by an inducement such as a “promise of pleasure,” “an enticement,” or prospect of “financial gain”).

Therefore, as the legislature specifically chose to use the term “lure” in Section 2910, not alternative words such as “invite” or “offer entry,” and because this is a penal statute which we must strictly construe, it is only that particular and specific conduct meeting the definition of a “lure” which this statute properly may be interpreted to criminally prohibit.

Continue reading ‘Does Law Banning “Lur[ing] … a Child into a Motor Vehicle” Cover Simply Offering a Child a Ride?’ »

The Obama Administration’s legislative proposals on cybersecurity are a distinctly mixed bag.  But probably the worst ideas are those put forward by the Justice Department, which last week testified about the need to update the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Again.

In fact, for the eleventh time since it was adopted in the 1980s.  We’ve seen this movie. Every time Congress gets exercised about cybersecurity, the Justice Department claims that the CFAA needs to be updated.  But “updated” almost always turns out to be a euphemism for “made more prosecutor-friendly.”

Justice’s latest proposals fit squarely into this mold.  Justice wants to create a new crime, hacking a critical infrastructure computer, with a mandatory minimum sentence of three years.  It wants to impose the same penalties on conspiracies and attempts as on successfully completed crimes.  It would get rid of first-time offender provisions in sentencing, increase sentences in general, allow civil forfeiture of hackers’ real estate, and make violation of the CFAA a RICO predicate, which would allow heightened penalties and private civil suits against violators.

Well, you might ask, why not get tough with hackers?  Surely we shouldn’t be playing pattycake with Anonymous and Lulzsec, let alone the foreign hackers endangering our national security.  That’s true, but the problem we have with those hackers is not the weakness of our criminal penalties but the fact that, most of the time, we can’t find them.  Until we do a better job of breaking the anonymity that protects them, increasing penalties for criminals we don’t catch will not make much difference.

Take a look at the website where Justice maintains a representative list of its most significant prosecutions.  What’s striking is how few prosecutions it has to brag about – less than 50 – and how few of those (maybe half) represent cases in which we actually caught the kind of remote hackers we’re most threatened by. I’m willing to bet that there is no other federal criminal law that has been amended so often in prosecutors’ favor with so few successful prosecutions to show for it.

The latest amendments are more of the same:  Shooting in the dark with a bigger gun. As protections against cyberattack, these amendments are useless.  They are added to the administration’s package mainly to give it the appearance of heft.

They are the legislative equivalent of Hamburger Helper.

Actually, they’re worse than that.  The RICO provision is far more dangerous than it first appears. To explain, I’ll need to repeat some of what Orin Kerr has been saying for years, so if you’re already familiar with that, you can skip the next ten paragraphs.

***

As I’ve said, the remarkable growth in cyberattacks over the last quarter century has enabled Justice to turn the CFAA into what may be the most prosecutor-friendly criminal statute on the books.  What does “prosecutor-friendly” mean in practice?  That any competent prosecutor can find a way to indict and convict anyone who does anything Really Bad with a computer.

With the CFAA, that’s mission accomplished:  The law imposes harsh criminal penalties on anyone who accesses a protected computer “without” or “in excess of” authorization.  The definition of a “protected computer” has been expanded until it covers any computer used in interstate or foreign communication, which in the Internet age is, well, every computer. As a practical matter, then, you can be indicted any time you do something on a computer that isn’t authorized. That term isn’t defined, but you can bet that if you do something Really Bad with a computer, it will turn out to be unauthorized.

Take Lori Drew, an overprotective, nasty mother who created a fake teenage-boy identity on MySpace in an effort to humiliate her daughter’s teenaged frenemy.  The scheme worked so well that the teen killed herself.  There’s no doubt that Lori Drew’s behavior was Really Bad, and it involved computers, so federal prosecutors decided it must violate the CFAA. And, mirabile dictu, it did.  By using a fake identity, Drew had violated MySpace’s terms of service, which meant that she had accessed a MySpace computer “in excess of” authorization. Drew was convicted, although in the end, with Orin Kerr’s help, the guilty verdict was overturned.

This kind of prosecutorial overreach is an inherent risk of the CFAA, given its reliance on the slippery concept of authorization.  As some civil liberties groups recently pointed out, the CFAA at its heart makes it a federal crime to violate a private contract, even a contract of adhesion like a social network’s terms of use:

If, for example, an employee photocopies an employer’s document to give to a friend without that employer’s permission, there is no federal crime (though there may be, for example, a contractual violation).  However, if an employee emails that document, there may be a CFAA violation.  If a person assumes a fictitious identity at a party, there is no federal crime.  Yet if they assume that same identity on a social network that prohibits pseudonyms, there may again be a CFAA violation.

I don’t want to be too hard on the drafters of the CFAA;  they faced a tough drafting problem.  Hackers cause terrible harm, but the things they do aren’t all that different from the things legitimate users do.  Legitimate users open files, modify code, install programs, and send data to remote sites.  So do hackers.  We know the difference between the two, but it’s not easy to express that difference without falling back on the notion that the good guys are authorized to do those things and the bad guys aren’t.

I think this means that any statute that criminalizes hacking is likely to be either too broad or not broad enough.  Congress chose broad language to make sure that hackers couldn’t get off on a technicality, but in the process it gave Justice enormous prosecutorial discretion. Justice Department official James Baker gave a persuasive defense of the “authorization” test in last week’s testimony.  But the Department’s misuse of its broad discretion in the Lori Drew case suggests a need for greater accountability and discipline within the Department.  Requiring that the head of the Criminal Division sign off on all such cases — and take the blame if they turn out badly — may be a more workable solution than taking away the prosecutors’ discretion by changing the law.

Remarkably, though, that isn’t even the worst problem created by the CFAA.  The law also creates a private cause of action, handing a big legal weapon to everyone from the RIAA to the Church of Scientology.  And private parties aren’t exactly showing a lot of restraint.  According to the Center for Democracy and Technology, at least one company has brought a CFAA counterclaim in a pregnancy discrimination case, seeking damages under the Act because its employee acted in excess of authorization on the corporate network.  What did she do?  She violated a corporate proscription on “excessive Internet use.”  Equally abusive is a case that Orin Kerr has pointed out – Sony’s threat to sue PS3 hackers because they used their own computers in violation of Sony’s licensing restrictions.

Maybe back in the 1980s, Congress thought that creating a civil action would unleash the plaintiff’s bar on real hackers.  If so, Congress was deluded.

Civil CFAA lawsuits have proliferated but by and large they aren’t being filed against people who hack into systems.  Instead, they’re being brought by corporations against employees thought to have downloaded too much information from the corporate network before quitting.  They’re being brought by websites to keep competitors from using “scraper” software to collect their pricing data. Maybe those are bad things.  If so, they’re probably already torts under state law, and it’s hard to see why the cases should be in federal court.  And if they aren’t torts under state law, well, it’s even harder to see why they should be in federal court.  It’s the law of unintended consequences run amok.

***

OK, that’s the Gospel According to Orin Kerr. Now back to the latest proposal from Justice.

Justice wants to make the CFAA one of the federal crimes that qualify as “racketeering activity” under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.  This would add RICO prosecutions to the long list of get-tough measures that Justice rarely uses against actual hackers because, well, because it can’t catch most actual hackers.

But that doesn’t mean the amendment would have no effect.  Because, like the CFAA, RICO creates a private cause of action against RICO violators.  Actually it’s not just a private cause of action.  It’s a bonanza. Plaintiffs can recover treble damages plus attorney’s fees by bringing suit against “racketeers.” And what do you know, just like CFAA civil suits, it turns out that most RICO civil suits have been brought against ordinary businessmen, “rather than against the archetypal, intimidating mobster,” according to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court and Congress have struggled for decades to curb abuses of civil RICO.  Now, almost casually, the Justice Department proposes to open another can of RICO liability for unintended defendants.

How would that happen?  First, treble damages under civil RICO can be claimed by any person “injured in his business or property by reason of” a RICO violation.  18 U.S.C. § 1964(c).    A violation of RICO occurs, inter alia, when a “person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in” interstate or foreign commerce participates, “directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity.”  (Sorry for the dense language; it may help to parse the language by thinking of a mobster who acquires partial ownership of a legitimate “enterprise” through threats of violence. He would be squarely covered by the provision, as long as he committed a  pattern of racketeering activity –- that is, more than one predicate crime.  But the words will sweep in far more conduct than classic mobster tactics, especially if Justice gets its way and violating the CFAA becomes a predicate offense.)

Pulling these elements together, let’s look at what the Justice Department’s proposal would mean for some of the unnecessary federal litigation now being brought under the CFAA.  We can start with the employer lawsuits against departing employees.  Employers who want to turn their CFAA claims into much more potent RICO claims would have to show that the departing employee committed two CFAA violations, which should be easy, since every unauthorized download is a new offense.  And, they’d have to show that they were injured in their business by reason of the racketeering; this they can do by showing the same damages that supported the CFAA case.  In short, on a quick look, the Justice Department seems to have created a massive incentive for companies to sue departing employees, and perhaps the companies they join, as racketeers.  Anyone who has a plausible CFAA case today will have a plausible RICO case once Justice gets its amendment.

Okay, another one: How about CDT’s favorite case – the pregnant worker accused of a CFAA violation because of excessive Internet use?  Well, she probably violated the rule on Internet use more than once, which makes for a pattern of racketeering, and she’s employed by an enterprise, in whose affairs she participated by misusing its computers.  The enterprise has been injured, too, by virtue of not getting her full attention at work.  What do you know? She sounds like a racketeer too!  It would be malpractice not to hit her with a counterclaim for treble damages and attorneys’ fees.

(At this point, you may be wondering why the Obama administration, of all administrations, wants to give employers even heavier litigation weapons to use against their employees. Beats me.  Maybe it has something to do with trial lawyers.  Maybe it’s just prosecutorial myopia.  James Baker’s testimony doesn’t even acknowledge the issue.)

OK, let’s try a harder problem.  You’re a copyright holder — Jon Stewart, say — and you’d like faster takedowns and more respect from YouTube.  Posting copyrighted material on YouTube is a violation of law and can lead to termination of your YouTube account.  The Lori Drew case tells us that the people who post clips in violation of that policy are using YouTube’s computers “in excess of authorization.” That’s a CFAA violation.  Do it twice and it becomes a pattern of racketeering, at least if Justice gets its way.  Now, the people doing the posting aren’t employees of YouTube, but they are “associated with” the YouTube enterprise, and they are participating indirectly in the conduct of YouTube’s affairs by virtue of their shocking CFAA violations.  What’s more, the Daily Show can claim injury in its business because it has lost viewers and ad revenue.  Presto!  Another racketeer takes the fall.  Maybe they’ll name YouTube’s parent, Google, as a co-conspirator just to keep it on its toes.

Oh, and what about you, dear reader?  Have you ever violated the terms of service on a website?  Hell, have you ever read them?  C’mon, I’ve seen the comments on my privacy and TSA posts. Are you sure yours didn’t violate the site’s proscription on “abusive or denigrating comments”?  Cause if you did it twice, that’s a predicate, and VC is an interstate enterprise that you are associated with and in whose affairs you are participating by virtue of your appalling violations of the terms of use and thus of the CFAA.  Best of all, VC has what strikes me as a pretty upscale readership.  Treble damages and attorney’s fees would go a long way toward finally monetizing my blogging habit.

(Had you going there, huh?  Actually, as far as I know, VC doesn’t have any terms of use for commenters, so fire away. You’re safe.)

I’m not a RICO lawyer, thank God, so maybe I’m oversimplifying what it takes to make out a civil RICO suit.  But, what the hell, the lawyers representing departing or pregnant employees aren’t RICO lawyers either.  If the claim against them is plausible on its face, they will face overwhelming pressure to settle, quite possibly by abandoning good claims, especially if their next employer is dragged in as a co-conspirator.  Ditto for the YouTube uploaders.

And in exchange for all this uncertainty and injustice, what benefit can we expect in fighting actual criminals?  About as much as we’ve gotten from the CFAA’s private right of action, which is nothing, and from RICO’s private right of action, which is less than nothing.

This is Hamburger Helper with a dose of cyanide.

UPDATE: Clarified with a reference to Google’s ownership of YouTube

Photo credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arkangl/with/4709166389/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/like_the_grand_canyon/3853938360/lightbox/

Der Spiegel (Germany) has an interesting and troubling story about this. Here’s an excerpt, though you should read the whole thing:

According to police, the victim’s and the perpetrator’s families had met at a restaurant in the presence of an Islamic “justice of the peace,” an arbitrator who mediates conflicts between Muslims. The two families had reached a compromise: Fuat would drop the charges, and in exchange be relieved of part of his debt.

According to Bernhard Mix, the public prosecutor in charge of the case, Fuat’s false testimony was part of a deal between the families. “It’s difficult to establish the truth using legal means, when the perpetrator and the victim reach an agreement,” he says….

These justices of the peace don’t wear robes. Their courtrooms are mosques or teahouses. They draw their authority not from the law, but from their standing within the community. Most of them are senior members of their families, or imams, and some even fly in from Turkey or Lebanon to resolve disputes. Muslims seek them out when families argue, when daughters take up with nonbelievers or when clans clash. They often trust these arbitrators more than they trust the state….

In [a recent book on the subject], judges and prosecutors tell of threats toward public officials and systematic interference with witnesses. “We know we’re being given a performance, but the courts are powerless,” says Stephan Kuperion, a juvenile court judge in Berlin. Federal public prosecutor Jörn Hauschild warns, “It would be a terrible development if serious criminal offences in these circles could no longer be resolved. The legal system would be reduced to collecting victims.”

[The arbitrators] operate in a gray area between conflict resolution and obstruction of justice. [One arbitrator], for example, claims to work closely with authorities, but investigators suspect him of preventing witnesses from giving statements to the police. So far they’ve never been able to prove an obstruction of justice….

If these arbitrators would limit themselves to containing conflicts, there would be no reason to object, says legal and Islamic studies expert Mathias Rohe in the Bavarian city of Erlangen. German law, after all, allows for arbitration. What Rohe finds unacceptable is the exertion of influence over criminal proceedings. “Criminal prosecution is a privilege of the state,” he says.

The state justice system, though, is having a hard time shaking off the shadow system….

For a similar story from the U.S., though apparently involving only a small Orthodox Jewish community, see this post.

I generally support the right to engage in religious arbitration of civil disputes, if the parties agree to such arbitration by contract. Such arbitrations should generally be legally enforceable, like other contractually provided-for arbitrations are enforceable, and subject to the general limits that govern other contractually provided-for arbitrations (though there may or may not be some legal problems with that if the arbitrators enforce sex- or religion-discriminatory rules with regard to witnesses). In most states, for instance, parties can provide by binding contract for a marital property settlement, subject to some limitations, but not for a child custody decision (since that involves the rights of people other than the parties). Likewise, arbitration of such disputes should be permitted on similar terms.

I recognize that sometimes the contracts might be the result of social, economic, or emotional pressure, but generally speaking that isn’t a reason to set aside contracts: Businesses and individuals routinely enter into deals as a result of economic pressure, and sometimes social and emotional pressure, and we generally don’t try to rescue people from such deals (again, with some exceptions) — the same should be true if the individuals involved are members of religious groups who call for religious arbitrators rather than secular ones.

But this having been said, the practices described in the Der Spiegel article are quite different, and seem to be crimes, not contracts. Working out a deal through which someone testifies falsely is conspiracy to commit perjury. Working out a deal through which a witness is paid not to testify is conspiracy to obstruct justice. (Sometimes prosecutors may agree to drop minor charges if the underlying harm has been properly compensated for, but that is a decision for prosecutors to make.) Even if the parties have concluded — with or without social pressure — that they don’t want the crime to be prosecuted, the rest of us still have an important interest in making sure that the criminal is incapacitated or deterred from committing such future crimes, and that others are deterred as well.

In any event, some of what the article describes constitute serious crimes, which should be prosecuted and punished as such. Of course, proving such crimes is often difficult, because once the deal is made, the witnesses refuse to testify. But in at least some cases, there should be enough evidence to prove guilt; and a few such prosecutions can have a considerably broader deterrent effect, it seems to me. Thanks to Dan Gifford for the pointer.

I just ran across an interesting 2009 case that I thought I’d note for our readers. Here’s a brief and oversimplified summary of the facts: Danna Back dated Nicholas Super, but then decided to get back together with an earlier boyfriend, Daniel Holliday. Back knew that “Super threatened Holliday with a gun several times,” and that Super was a dangerous guy who was “known to pull his gun out on anybody.” Nonetheless, Back asked Super to drive her to Holliday’s house (hoping to get back together with Holliday). Super stayed around, and when Back and Holliday started arguing, and Holliday kicked Back out, Super and Holliday started arguing. Super then shot and killed Holliday.

Back was then prosecuted for, and convicted of, involuntary manslaughter, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed, on the grounds that the jury had enough “evidence of: (1) the prior intimate relationship between appellant and Super; (2) appellant’s knowledge that Super previously fired a gun into the victim’s garage; (3) appellant’s knowledge of the past conflicts between Super and the victim; and (4) appellant’s knowledge that Super carried a gun. On this record, although appellant did not shoot [Holliday], we cannot say that in light of the evidence presented, a reasonable jury could not infer that appellant was grossly negligent [and even criminally reckless] in getting Super to drive her to the victim’s house.” Moreover, the proximate cause requirement was satisfied, chiefly because Super’s attack on Holliday was reasonably foreseeable. “Here, appellant may not have foreseen that the victim would be killed in the manner that he was, but appellant had knowledge about the conflicts between Super and D.H., and knew of Super’s reputation for carrying and using his gun. And although appellant may not have intended for D.H. to be harmed or killed, the jury could have properly determined that she could have anticipated that harm may occur.”

The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed, because “[a] defendant cannot be negligent, culpably or otherwise, unless the defendant has a duty that he or she breached,” and “there is generally no duty to protect strangers from the criminal actions of a third party” absent a “special relationship” that didn’t exist here.

Now I think the state supreme court got it right as to the bottom line; people shouldn’t be held liable for simply bringing violent people to a situation that would foreseeable cause more violence. Part of my concern here is that any such liability would be so hard to cabin that those who have the misfortune of living around violent people could have their liberty drastically constrained — not just by regrettable practical reality, but by the law — as they have to organize their lives around not inadvertently enabling or provoking others’ violence. Thus, for instance, allowing liability on the prosecution’s theory would have potentially led Back to be liable for merely informing her current boyfriend that she was leaving him for someone else (since that could foreseeably lead to the boyfriend killing or injuring her new lover), or for cheating on her boyfriend in such a situation, or for openly having dinner with her new lover in a place where her boyfriend might see, and so on.

Holding Back liable for negligently bringing on a deadly confrontation between Super and Holliday would leave Back a continuing victim to Super’s oppression, and would indeed bring in government power in support of Super’s oppression, because Back would now have a legal duty not to do those things that might provoke Super. That strikes me as quite troublesome, and more troublesome than leaving Back free to do such things even if that increases the risk of death for Holliday or other third parties.

But I’m not persuaded by the supreme court’s reasons for reaching the right result. The prosecution’s theory wasn’t that Back negligently failed to protect Holliday. Rather, its claim was that Back negligently engaged in the affirmative act of bringing Super to Holliday’s house, in the context where she should have known that violence might happen. In such an affirmative liability theory, the presence or absence of a special relationship, it seems to me, would be irrelevant.

Thus, for instance, consider this hypothetical: Say Back affirmatively brought a dangerous animal — say, a poisonous snake — to a place where she knew the animal might well attack Holliday, and the animal indeed killed Holliday. I take it that then she Would be guilty of involuntary manslaughter (assuming she was sufficiently grossly negligent in creating such a risk) even though she had no special relationship with Holliday, since she’s being faulted for a sin of commission (affirmatively endangering), not of omission (failing to protect). That Super was a dangerous person and not a dangerous animal should, I think, make a legal difference. But that difference isn’t explained, I think, by the conclusion that Back had no duty to protect Holliday, and no “special relationship” with Holliday. Or am I missing something? I’d love to hear what others think.

A golden retriever named Rosie recently became the first judicially approved dog allowed in the witness box for the purpose of comforting a witness while she testifies:

Rosie, the first judicially approved courtroom dog in New York, was in the witness box here nuzzling a 15-year-old girl who was testifying that her father had raped and impregnated her. Rosie sat by the teenager’s feet. At particularly bad moments, she leaned in….

Now an appeal planned by the defense lawyers is placing Rosie at the heart of a legal debate that will test whether there will be more Rosies in courtrooms in New York and, possibly, other states.

Rosie is a golden retriever therapy dog who specializes in comforting people when they are under stress….

[Defense] lawyers, David S. Martin and Steven W. Levine of the public defender’s office, have raised a series of objections that they say seems likely to land the case in New York’s highest court. They argue that as a therapy dog, Rosie responds to people under stress by comforting them, whether the stress comes from confronting a guilty defendant or lying under oath.

But they say jurors are likely to conclude that the dog is helping victims expose the truth. “Every time she stroked the dog,” Mr. Martin said in an interview, “it sent an unconscious message to the jury that she was under stress because she was telling the truth.”

“There was no way for me to cross-examine the dog,” Mr. Martin added.

My wife and I recently acquired a golden retriever puppy, and we love the breed as much as anyone. Nonetheless, I think there is some merit to the defense lawyers’ concerns. A witness with a cute golden retriever sitting next to her almost always makes a better impression on people than the same witness sans retriever – whether or not she is telling the truth. Every time I walk around the neighborhood with our little Willow, I certainly notice people reacting a lot more favorably than they do when I walk there by myself. You don’t have to be a criminal law expert to recognize that people respond favorably to cute dogs. That’s why they’re such popular pets in the first place.

Does that prove that dogs should be categorically banned from the witness stand? Perhaps not. But it certainly suggests that their presence should be restricted as much as possible and at most limited to cases where there services are absolutely essential, as in the case of seeing-eye dogs, for example.

The case is People v. Richardson, decided by the Michigan Supreme Court Friday. The big dispute is not about the law, but about whether the instructions were clear enough; but many cases indeed turn on that very question. If you’re interested in self-defense cases as they are actually litigated — especially in situations where the facts are ambiguous (was the defendant reasonably afraid of imminent death or great bodily harm, or was the threat over and the defendant attacked just because he was angry or worried about harm at some future time?), where the jury might well have been confused, and where the instructions weren’t as clear as they could have been — you might check this out.

The recent controversial acquittal of Casey Anthony has stimulated efforts in many states to enact “Caylee’s Law” as a response. The law would require parents to report a missing child to the authorities within 24 hours, and the death of a child within 1 hour. If they fail to do either, they would be guilty of a felony (a federal one if the law is enacted by Congress).

Radley Balko has a good column explaining the many shortcomings of this idea. As he points out, high-profile criminal cases often stimulate demands for ill-advised laws, even when the case in question is extremely atypical:

Laws named after crime victims and dead people are usually a bad idea. They play more to emotion than reason. But they’re disturbingly predictable, especially when they come after the death of a child. ….

There are myriad other problems with the one-hour requirement. What if a child dies while sleeping? When would you start the clock on the parent’s one-hour window to report? From the time the parent discovers the child is dead, or from the time the child actually dies? If it’s the former, can you really believe what a parent tells you if he knows a felony charge hinges on his answer? What if a parent or babysitter missed the deadline because she fell asleep at the time the child was playing outside and suffered a fatal accident?…

The portion of the bill that requires a parent to report a missing child within 24 hours is just as fraught with problems. When does that clock start? From the time the child actually gets abducted, gets lost, or is somehow killed, or at the time the parents noticed the child was missing? How do you pinpoint the time that they “noticed”?….

The law and the attention it attracts could also cause problems of overcompliance. How many parents will notify the authorities with false reports within an hour or two, out of fear of becoming suspects? How many such calls and wasted police resources on false alarms will it take before police grow jaded and begin taking note of missing child reports, but don’t bother investigating them until much later? How many legitimate abductions will then go uninvestigated during the critical first few hours because they were lost in the pile of false reports inspired by Caylee’s Law?

This is not the first time that a highly unusual but much-publicized case has led to this kind of overreaction. Consider the dubious “zero tolerance” policies enacted after Columbine or Megan’s Law, enacted in reaction to a rare case of child rape by a stranger.

Why are these laws so popular with voters? Part of the explanation is an understandable sympathy with the victims. But a logical and knowledgeable electorate would still ask serious questions about the potential costs and benefits of the proposed laws before supporting them – especially if, as in this case, the proposed law might actually undercut crime-fighting efforts by wasting law enforcement resources. The very rare parents who deliberately kill their children and then try to cover up the evidence are unlikely to report what happened merely because of this law. A conviction for murder is a much greater threat than a conviction for violating Caylee’s Law, unless the punishments for the latter are going to be truly draconian (which would be problematic in its own right). On the other hand, lots of innocent parents will probably file reports just to avoid even a slight risk of prosecution, thereby burdening law enforcement agencies with lots of useless paperwork and false leads.

It seems likely that political ignorance is an important part of the story here. The public sees the high-profile case, and has a knee-jerk desire to “do something about it.” Most voters don’t realize how rare such cases are, and also know very little about the potential downsides of proposals like these. And, because political ignorance is rational, few will take the time and effort to investigate the evidence and deliberate carefully before forming an opinion. For their part, politicians hungry for votes and activists hungry for media attention are more than willing to cater to the public’s demands.

It’s unrealistic to expect rationally ignorant voters to devote significant time and effort to studying proposals like Caylee’s Law. But they should at least adopt Ted Frank’s Law as a helpful heuristic:

My rule of thumb is a strong presumption that any law named after a victim is poor public policy enacted by legislators who confuse voting against a law with voting against an innocent person…

Ted’s rule isn’t perfect. Once in a blue moon, a law named after an atypical but highly publicized crime victim really will do more good than harm. But it’s likely to be correct a lot more often than not. Indeed, Frank’s Law is so logical and simple that one wonders why most voters haven’t adopted it already. Sadly, the answer may be that it’s rational for ignorant voters to do a poor job of evaluating the information they do have. In the wake of a terrible tragedy, it’s much more emotionally satisfying to call for decisive action to save the next Caylee Anthony than to hold back on the grounds that there may be nothing we can do.

UPDATE: Ted Frank has some thoughts of his own on Caylee’s Law here.

UPDATE #2: Maia Szalavitz of Time has some further information on the flaws of Caylee’s law and the harm caused by past laws enacted under similar circumstances.

Held, by the Indiana Supreme Court: A drunken passenger in a car that is pulled over for a traffic violation is guilty of public intoxication, on the ground that “established precedent has long recognized that a person in a vehicle stopped along a highway is in a public place for purposes of the public intoxication statute. ” (citing Miles v. State, 247 Ind. 423, 425, 216 N.E.2d 847, 849 (1966)).

What a strange result, and as far as I can tell, entirely avoidable. First, the Miles case seems easily distinguishable. In Miles, the person arrested was found by the officer parked by the side of the road with the window down, and thus was at least plausibly in “public.” In contrast, as I understand Moore, the defendant was only stopped by the side of the road because the police officer seized Moore and forced Moore to be stopped by the side of the road when the officer pulled over the vehicle.

Under the principle of the venerable case of Martin v. State, 31 Ala. App. 334, 12 So.2d 427 (1944) — taught in nearly every 1L criminal law course — I would think this makes a critical difference: An officer can’t force a drunken person to be in “public” and then arrest the person for being drunk in public. As the Martin court put it:

[A] voluntary appearance is presupposed [by the statute]. The rule has been declared, and we think it sound, that an accusation of drunkenness in a designated public place cannot be established by proof that the accused, while in an intoxicated condition, was involuntarily and forcibly carried to that place by the arresting officer.

I would think the same principle applies when the defendant was forcibly stopped along the highway.

Thanks to Howard Bashman for the link.

The Ohio Supreme Court just held this yesterday in In re D.B.; it’s a very important decision, and since the court expressly rested its holding on its view of the U.S. Constitution, not of the Ohio Constitution (see footnote 2 for the reason), I think there’s a substantial chance — not a certainty, but a strong likelihood, at least in the 30-40% range — that the U.S. Supreme Court will agree to consider the case.

The case involved a 12-year-old boy, D.B., who had sex with an 11-year-old boy, M.G. D.B. was charged both with forcible rape of M.G. and with statutory rape, which criminalizes any sex with someone who “is less than thirteen years of age.” (A different statute makes it a crime for an over-18-year-old to have sex with a 13-to-16-year-old, so don’t think that the general age of consent in Ohio is 13.) The juvenile court judge convicted D.B. of the statutory rape, but not of the forcible rape, gave him probation and a suspended sentence, and ordered him “to attend counseling and group therapy.”

Of course, if there was no forcible rape, then M.G. as well as D.B. would be guilty of statutory rape, since M.G. also had sex with someone (D.B.) who was “less than thirteen years of age.” The prosecutor, though, prosecuted only D.B. In this case, that prosecutorial choice was basically mandated as to most of the sexual incidents by the prosecutor’s view that the sex was forced by D.B. (One of the nine counts of the indictment was for statutory rape alone, while the others were for forcible rape or statutory rape; but even there the prosecutor might well have thought the sex was forced, like he thought it was in the other eight incidents, but just thought the evidence was inconclusive on the subject.)

But in other cases, a prosecutor who doesn’t think the sex was forcible might choose whom to prosecute based on who he thought was more culpable, or used undue but not illegal pressure. And the decision to prosecute only one of the parties might well be driven by the concern that if both are prosecuted, both will refuse to testify, and neither can be convicted (though in relatively unusual cases, such as this one, there may be third-party witnesses). Of course, a prosecutor might choose whom to prosecute based on his personal hostility to one or another party or the party’s family, or based on which case will play best in the media, or on other bases that I think are generally improper; I have great respect for most prosecutors, but there are bad people in every profession, and even good people sometimes do bad things. Still, there are certainly well-intentioned as well badly intentioned potential exercises of prosecutorial discretion in such cases.

In any event, the Ohio Supreme Court basically held that this discretionary approach to statutory rape, under which two people would routinely be guilty but the prosecutor would choose which one to prosecute, violates the federal Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause: The statute is “unconstitutionally vague because the statute authorizes and encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” And, “[b]ecause D.B. and M.G. were both under the age of 13 at the time the events in this case occurred, they were both members of the class protected by the statute, and both could have been charged under the offense,” so “[a]pplication of the statute in this case to a single party violates the Equal Protection Clause’s mandate that persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike.” (The opinion was unanimous on the first, Due Process Clause, theory, though one judge didn’t endorse the Equal Protection Clause theory.)

If this reasoning is accepted throughout the country, the results would be sweeping. First, many states outlaw all sex — without exceptions for people close in age — not just with under-13-year-olds, but with under-16-year-olds or, in the case of California, under-18-year-olds. (Sex among 15-to-17-year-olds is a misdemeanor, in theory for both parties.) All those statutory rape laws would be cast into doubt, when applied to sex among minors who are under the age of consent. [UPDATE: I originally left then "when applied to sex among minors who are under the age of consent" implicit, since that's what the rest of the post is discussing, but then decided to make it explicit.]

But beyond this, prosecutorial discretion (and police discretion, which I take it would be no more permissible under the court’s opinion) has, rightly or wrongly, long been a part of the American legal system. Speeding laws are routinely enforced against some but not others, since there isn’t the manpower to enforce them against everyone. In conspiracy cases, prosecutors often choose whom to prosecute for the more serious crimes and whom to prosecute for the less serious crimes, even though all the conspirators are formally guilty of all the crimes. And these choices are often based on the prosecutors’ judgments about who more deserves punishment — similar to judgments in statutory rape cases about who more deserves punishment — as well as about who is more likely to provide helpful evidence.

And the list could go on. I acknowledge that the enforcement of the statutory rape law is more necessarily linked to prosecutorial discretion than the enforcement of some other laws. But the general point remains: prosecutorial discretion, including discretion based on prosecutorial judgment about who is more morally at fault (even when everyone is legally at fault) is a routine and institutionalized aspect of the enforcement of many laws. [UPDATE: It's generally unconstitutional to exercise such discretion in ways that discriminate based on the defendant's race, religion, or political affiliation, or based on sex in cases where sex discrimination is constitutionally forbidden (see item 4 in the next paragraph on why that might not apply to statutory rape cases); but outside these forbidden bases for discrimination, prosecutorial discretion has long been seen as constitutionally permissible.]

States could preserve some of their ability to criminalize nonforcible underage sex by setting up clear rules about which of the parties will be prosecuted, for instance (1) the older party, (2) the party who received rather than provided genital stimulation (assuming all the conduct was oral or anal sex, and all or most of it in the relationship went one way), (3) the party that could be proven to have provided some supposedly undue inducement for the act, even if the inducement wouldn’t suffice to make the act illegal among adults, or even (4) the boy, in heterosexual contexts (see Michael M. v. Superior Court (1981)). But this would deprive prosecutors of the power to decide, based on the circumstances of each case as they see them, which party is actually the more culpable one. Perhaps prosecutors should indeed lack this power, for reasons of equality or the “rule of laws, not of men”; but it is at least sometimes a useful power, and a power that they have long been understood as having.

(It’s not clear, by the way, whether under the Ohio Supreme Court’s reasoning a statutory rape law that’s broadly applicable to both parties, but routinely enforced against only one, might be constitutional if there are constraints on prosecutors’ discretion that do not require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, for instance rules that require prosecutors to show the judge by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant provided undue inducement to the alleged victim. The theory for the constitutionality of such a law is that it preserves the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt for the elements of the offense, and prevents excessive prosecutorial discretion through the separate preponderance-of-the-evidence showing. But I’m not sure what the Ohio Supreme Court would think of that.)

Because of the scope of this ruling, because it is such a departure from the traditional view of prosecutorial power, and because it is done by a state supreme court in the name of the U.S. Constitution and not just of the state constitution, I’m inclined to think that there’s a substantial probability that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case. And if it does, I think most of the Justices will vote to reverse.

The Equal Protection Clause analysis in this case strikes me as easy to reverse on the facts of this case (and recall that this was an as-applied challenge, focusing on the facts of this case). The prosecutor apparently thought that D.B. and M.G. were very differently situated — he thought D.B. forced M.G. into sex, and even though the judge disagreed, the prosecutor’s belief on this point should suffice to justify the difference in treatment.

And as to the Due Process Clause, I think the U.S. Supreme Court Justices will conclude that the law contemplates only what is the traditional practice of prosecutorial discretion, that the “process” that defendants are “due” has to be determined in light of this traditional practice, and that such a traditionally accepted feature of our system therefore does not violate the Due Process Clause. That, at least, is my prediction, worth every penny you paid for it; and keep in mind that all the Justices of the Ohio Supreme Court — which, by my count, includes six Republicans and one Democrat — disagree with my analysis on this.

Thanks to How Appealing for the pointer to the Ohio Supreme Court decision.

The brief supporting the petition for rehearing was filed in Barnes v. State, the decision Orin blogged about last month. The brief was also signed by 31 of the 100 Indiana House of Representatives members, but the overwhelming support in the Senate struck me as especially striking.

The brief argues that the Indiana self-defense statute, which allows the use of force “if the person reasonably believes that the force is necessary to prevent or terminate the other person’s unlawful entry of or attack on the person’s dwelling, curtilage, or occupied motor vehicle,” is applicable whether the unlawful entrant is an ordinary citizen or a police officer. Neither the Barnes majority nor the dissent cited this statute, and my quick look through the briefs suggests that the parties didn’t mention it on appeal; I suspect that means they didn’t bring up at trial, either.

Yesterday I posted about Fairfax County teacher Sean Lanigan, falsely accused of child molestation. Here’s a bit more:

(1) Lanigan answers Post readers’ questions here. He opines that the accuser’s name should not be published, as she is a troubled 13 year old girl. I was already reconsidering my view on this, and I suppose I ultimately agree with Lanigan that her name shouldn’t be published–in part because I’ve learned that the Post also doesn’t publish the names of minors accused of crimes. [Apparently, however, the accuser hasn't faced even any internal discipline from the county school system. Good thing for her she decided to make a false allegation of sexual abuse instead of, say, bringing a Tylenol from home.]

(2) I have two extended family members (who are part of completely different branches of the family and are unknown to each other) who were falsely accused of molesting their own children and arrested, just so their wives could get an advantage in custody/divorce proceedings (neither was prosecuted, but much damage was done to both men and their children as their wives pursued their respective vendettas). I also know people who suffered serious abuse that was consistently ignored by authority figures. It seems like somehow a lot of energy gets expended on pursuing false accusations, and not enough on getting the bad guys (and gals). I wish there was an obvious solution, but I don’t have one.

(3) Speaking of false accusations against teachers, Hans Bader has been all over a story that hasn’t received nearly attention:

If the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has its way, more teachers like [Lanigan] will end up being fired even if they are acquitted by a jury of any wrongdoing, and may very well be innocent. It sent a letter to school officials on April 4 ordering them to lower the burden of proof they use when determining whether students or staff are guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault. According to the Department of Education’s demands, schools must find people guilty if there is a mere 51% chance that they are guilty – a so-called preponderance of the evidence standard. So if an accused is found not guilty under a higher burden of proof – like the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard that applies in criminal cases – the accused will still be subject to disciplinary action under the lower burden of proof dictated by the Education Department.

Most colleges have historically required “clear and convincing” evidence of guilt. This sensible standard requires less absolute certainty about guilt than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal prosecutions, but more certainty than the mere 51% chance (preponderance) standard demanded by the Education Department. But under pressure from the Education Department, colleges across the country have now abandoned this safeguard against false accusations.

I admit to less certainty than Bader about what the appropriate standard is for accusations of misconduct in the academic context, especially for sexual assault as opposed to “harassment,” the latter of which universities (in part under pressure from DOE) often interpret way too broadly (see relevant discussion in my book, You Can’t Say That!). But I do know that the Department of Education has no business dictating a preponderance of the evidence standard to universities nationwide. Bader provides many links to legal and policy objections to DOE’s new policy.

A Fairfax County gym teacher was falsely accused of molesting a twelve-year old student who had a vendetta against him, and was prosecuted based on the flimsiest of evidence (basically, the word of the student who held a grudge, and her friend, with contrary eyewitness and physical evidence). It took a jury all of forty-seven minutes to acquit him. The Washington Post has the story here.

Two comments: (1) Given the facts related in the Post, this prosecution seems to show, at best, incompetence on the part of Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh. Unfortunately, it’s rare that any consequences follow from incompetence or even deliberate malfeasance by a prosecutor; (2) The Post declined to publish the accuser’s name because she’s “a minor.” Fiddle-faddle. She was mature enough to hatch a scheme that would send an adult to jail to satisfy a grudge against him. Adult misbehavior should have, if not adult consequences, at least consequences. And how are other adults to protect themselves from her accusations if she’s allowed to maintain anonymity?

UPDATE: The Post has an update to its story. Given the following, Detective Nicole Christian, the lead detective in the case, needs to be investigated and potentially disciplined:

But when others – staff, parents – tried to tell Christian anything she didn’t want to hear, she threatened them with prosecution for obstruction of justice, the staff members and parents said. School district investigator Steve Kerr’s investigative report, written after Lanigan’s acquittal, confirmed those claims, noting that: “Because of the jury’s decision, the detective [Christian] advised that she will not pursue criminal charges against [staff member] or [staff member].”

Wow! Christian also refused to listen when the accuser’s friend and co-accuser tried to recant.

The Post also explains its decision not to print the accuser’s name. I’d find its reasoning far more persuasive if it would also decline to print suspects’ names.

Finally, the update makes Fairfax County prosecutors, especially Christian, look even worse than the original story, and the case even weaker.

The old answer seemed to be “yes,” but in recent years the states have split on the subject. State v. Carlin, decided by the Alaska Supreme Court last Friday, switches Alaska from the “yes” column to the “no” column, partly because of growing concerns about victims’ rights:

While abatement [i.e., erasure of the conviction -EV] is contrary to the victims’ rights under the Alaska Constitution, relying on the presumption of guilt after conviction to leave the conviction intact is contrary to the defendant’s right to appeal. Therefore, we choose the middle path, electing to follow those courts that allow the appeal to continue upon substitution. These courts have provided that either the State or the defendant’s estate may request substitution, allowing another party to be substituted for the defendant. Specifically, we agree with the high courts of Washington and Maryland that the defendant’s estate may substitute in for the deceased appellant.

Following up on my post from yesterday about the FBI’s new policy of using the “public safety” exception to Miranda to question terrorism suspects  — The NY Times has the text of the FBI’s memo, found here.

The larger interesting question is why should the new policy be limited to suspected terrorists.  Presumably FBI agents question many other suspects who pose a threat to the American people.  It seems to me that the FBI should use the recognized public safety exception in all circumstances where it is applicable, not just the relatively exotic situations where terrorism is involved.

The Justice Department has just announced new guidelines, apparently expanding the “public safety” exception to Miranda to allow extended questioning of terror suspects.  The WSJ has the story here. Such extended questioning will require approval of Justice Department lawyers.

How does Eric Holder reconcile these new guidelines with the position that he supported in Dickerson in 2000 (that the Miranda warnings were constitutionally required)?  Bill Otis has an interesting analysis of the contradiction here.

Previous VC posts on the subject of Miranda and public safety can be found here. Questioning terror suspects seems to me to be  the classic example of the need for a public safety exemption.  It does seem desirable to have Congress add its backing to the exemption by passing a statute confirming its agreement with the Justice Department guidelines.

CNN reports. She “faces child endangerment and contributing to the delinquency of a minor charges, police said,” but she could also be prosecuted as an aider and abettor of the underlying battery by the son. (Encouraging someone to commit a specific crime, including when the crime is in progress, is a form of aiding and abetting.)

A video of the fight “was posted on YouTube and police say they learned about it from a tipster.” Note that encouraging a child to act in lawful self-defense, or instructing the child how to better defend himself, would not be a crime; but from the story there’s little reason to think that this is what the mother was doing.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about English police allegedly telling people not to use wire mesh in their windows, because it could injure burglars.

Some readers expressed doubt about the accuracy of the news stories on which I relied, so I e-mailed the Surrey Police Department for more information. Here’s what I learned.

1. The Surrey Police Department reports that it recommends against the use of “certain crime prevention measures such as the use of barbed wire,” which includes “anything with spikes or jagged edges.” “[I]f injury results on the premises [from the spiky or jagged material], the owner could conceivably be faced with claims for damages under the Occupier Liability Acts.” I assume that their advice relates to protection against burglars, since that was the context of my question. I quote the entire e-mail below.

2. The Department says that it does not recommend against the use of wire mesh. This is inconsistent with the news stories on the subject. (See, for instance, the Daily Mail story that I linked to, and the Sevenoaks Chronicle story on which the Daily Mail story seemed to be based.)

3. So as to wire mesh, we have at least two possibilities. First, it’s possible that the news stories misreported the views of the police officers who were quoted or paraphrased in the story, and that in fact the police department doesn’t counsel against the use of wire mesh (but only counsels against “anything with spikes or jagged edges”); this seems to be the view of Don Arthur (Club Troppo).

Second, it’s possible that the news stories were accurate, and that different police sources give different advice on the subject — some police officers did urge people not to put up wire mesh, because of the risk of lawsuits by burglars (as reported by the newspapers), even though that is not the police department’s official position.

In any case, here’s the e-mail from the Surrey Police:

Continue reading ‘More on the English Wire Mesh Story’ »