Surgery with a Meat Axe: Using Honest Services Fraud to Prosecute Federal Corruption.
The federal criminal law prohibiting bribery and gratuities is part of an intricate web of laws and regulations governing the behavior of federal public officials. In light of this complexity, the Supreme Court has admonished that the law must be construed narrowly, to act as a “scalpel” rather than...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology Vol. 99; no. 4; pp. 929 - 986 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Northwestern University
Fall2009
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=502118842&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 502118842 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00914169 CLC jtl: Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology issn: 00914169 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Fall2009 vid: 99 iid: 4 pid: 1093 pub: Northwestern University artinfo: ui: 502118842 ppf: 929 ppct: 57 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: C – @attributes: type: P size: 3.7MB tig: atl: Surgery with a Meat Axe: Using Honest Services Fraud to Prosecute Federal Corruption. aug: au: Eliason, Randall D. su: Criminal justice system Fraud Bribery Political corruption United States sug: subj: United States Criminal justice system Fraud Bribery Political corruption ab: The federal criminal law prohibiting bribery and gratuities is part of an intricate web of laws and regulations governing the behavior of federal public officials. In light of this complexity, the Supreme Court has admonished that the law must be construed narrowly, to act as a “scalpel” rather than a “meat axe.” In recent years, however, federal prosecutors increasingly have set aside the scalpel of the bribery and gratuities statute and have relied instead upon honest services mail and wire fraud to prosecute federal corruption. This Article analyzes the troubling implications of this trend and proposes a legislative solution. Court decisions over the past decade have narrowly construed the bribery and gratuities law, making prosecutions under that statute more difficult and giving prosecutors of federal corruption an incentive to look for alternative legal theories. Honest services fraud, traditionally used to fight state and local corruption, has stepped into the breach and increasingly appears in federal corruption cases. But this trend threatens to upset the balance struck in the law between corrupt criminal behavior by federal officials and behavior that may be unseemly or unethical but falls short of being criminal. The vague and sweeping honest services standard fails to provide adequate notice to government officials or the public concerning what the criminal law requires. The potential penalties also vastly exceed the penalties for gratuities or other lesser misconduct that may be repackaged as honest services fraud. To remedy these problems, the Article proposes amending the federal gratuities statute and enacting a statutory definition of honest services fraud. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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