Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (UPDATED)
September 14, 2009
This looks to be a very good book about the problems of overcriminalization. "Another overcriminalization book," you wonder. "Isn't the market saturated?" No; there will always be a shortage of good books. I skim all of the books on overcriminalization, and this one is legit.
I jumped right into Chapter Six, which discusses lawyers who have been prosecuted for conduct that, at the time of the prosecution, did not seem illegal. Chapter Six begins with a discussion of Connecticut lawyer Philip Russell.
Russell's client, a church, handed him a hard drive that allegedly contained child pornography. Had Attorney Russell opened up any images on the hard drive, he'd have been guilty of knowingly possessing child pornography. Rather than verify that child pornography images were present, he destroyed the hard drive with a hammer.
For this conduct, Russell was prosecuted for obstructing an investigation - even though no actual investigation was ongoing. All the prosecution alleged was that, had Russell handed over the hard drive, a criminal investigation followed. Thus, Russell was guilty of obstructing an investigation had had never occurred.
As a footnote: For the past two weeks we've covered prosecutorial misconduct in depth. Why is the Department of Justice not prosecuting unethical prosecutors? Don't unethical prosecutors obstruct investigations and the judicial process? While DOJ lets its own lawyers break clearly-established law, they make new law on the backs of honest lawyers like Attorney Russell.
Anyhow, Three Felonies a Day is definitely worth reading - even if you've read other books in the overcriminalization genre. (UPDATE: Scott Greenfield, who reviewed Three Felonies a Day two months ago, hated the book.)
: