This is a very important book, written by a top defense
attorney. This would tend to bias his feelings toward
his defendants and against the position of prosecutors,
but I have to say that his arguments in the cases he
cites, many of which he was involved in, are compelling.
He says the "silly putty" era of Law interpretation and
in many cases supported by the courts began in the
80's. Silly putty means that in many cases one could
not reasonably expect the defendant(s) to know that
they were violating the Law by how the Law was
worded (often ambiguously), but prosecutors
gave it a very wide interpretation after the fact.
This is a scary proposition when combined with the
enormous leverage prosecutors can wield with
general-purpose laws like Mail Fraud (you might
remember Tom Cruise, in "The Firm" saying
about Mail Fraud statues "but they've got
teeth"). Lying to federal officials, even when
not under oath is another.
The game works by threatening the witnesses/
suspects/coworkers with very lengthy prison
sentences if they don't cooperate. This can
cause people to turn on each other, even
lying to save their own hineys. The object
is to get the targets to agree to a plea deal
where they might have their reputations/
companies/personal lives ruined, with big
fines and sometimes hard time.
His analysis of the destruction of
Arthur Anderson (accountants for
Enron) and prosecutions of Enron
executives was quite compelling and
contrary to what I and most of the public
thought. Similarly about 80s financial
wizard Michael Milken. Read and draw
your own conclusions.
At the end he makes the good point that
this type of 'justice" destroys valuable
institutions of society -- coworkers,
employee/employer, marriages even.
I gave only 4 stars because it was a
bit of a tough read, even though well
written just because of the technical
nature of the material. Also, though
the book was published in 2011 so
probably unfairly on my part, it cited
none of the considerable abuse of
power by the Justice Department
in the last 6 years.
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