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Bargained Justice: Plea Bargaining's Innocence Problem And The Brady Safety-Valve, Lucian Dervan Dec 2011

Bargained Justice: Plea Bargaining's Innocence Problem And The Brady Safety-Valve, Lucian Dervan

Lucian E Dervan

If any number of attorneys were asked in 2004 whether Lea Fastow’s plea bargain in the Enron case was constitutional, the majority would respond with a simple word – Brady. Yet while the 1970 Supreme Court decision Brady v. United States authorized plea bargaining as a form of American justice, the case also contained a vital caveat that has been largely overlooked by scholars, practitioners, and courts for almost forty years. Brady contains a safety-valve that caps the amount of pressure that may be asserted against defendants by prohibiting prosecutors from offering incentives in return for guilty pleas that are …


Hearing On Stolen Or Counterfeit Goods Legislation, Lucian Dervan Dec 2011

Hearing On Stolen Or Counterfeit Goods Legislation, Lucian Dervan

Lucian E Dervan

On March 28, 2012, Professor Dervan was called to testify before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security (Judiciary Committee, U.S. House of Representatives) and offer his thoughts regarding proposed counterfeit goods legislation (The Safe Doses Act (H.R. 4223) and the Counterfeit Drug Penalty Enhancement Act of 2011 (H.R. 3668)). In his prepared statement, Professor Dervan examines the phenomenon of overcriminalization, the collapse of mens rea, the true impact of increased statutory maximums, plea bargaining, and the continued deterioration of our constitutionally protected right to trial by jury. His closing remarks to the Committee offer a poignant critique of …


Global Bribery: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Lucian Dervan Dec 2011

Global Bribery: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Lucian Dervan

Lucian E Dervan

Written for a European publication focusing on internal investigations, this piece seeks to introduce the reader to the fundamental elements of the American FCPA, including discussion of available defenses under the statute. Further, this piece discusses some of the collateral considerations that must be made during the investigation of an FCPA matter, particularly given the existence of overlapping anti-bribery provisions in various countries throughout the world and the likelihood of concurrent parallel proceedings both in the United States and abroad during the pendency of any international bribery matter. Finally, this piece offers some thoughts regarding FCPA compliance programs.